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ISRAEL KRISTAL SURVIVED two world wars and the Holocaust but doesn’t consider himself particularly remarkable, despite being named the world’s oldest living man today at age 112.
The Israeli was born in what is now Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers’ first powered and controlled aeroplane flight.
He lived there after the First World War until the Nazi occupation in World War II, when he was eventually sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Kristal survived and moved to Israel, where he has lived for over six decades.
Guinness World Records confirmed today he was now considered the world’s oldest living man, but Kristal remained modest.
“I don’t know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why,” he said in a statement.
There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men than me who are no longer alive.
His daughter Shula Koperstoch was more excited.
“It’s a privilege (to have reached this age) and I’m very happy and he’s happy too. It’s really a privilege,” she told AFP.
Marco Frigatti, Head of Records for Guinness, said::
Kristal’s achievement is remarkable – he can teach us all an important lesson about the value of life and how to stretch the limits of human longevity.
The oldest living woman, at 116 years old, is Susannah Mushatt Jones, of the United States, who was born on July 6, 1899.
“The camps taught me”
Kristal was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Zarnov in what is now Poland in the same year as the first transatlantic radio broadcast from the United States to England.
He started to read Hebrew at the age of three and has been performing Jewish ritual prayer every day possible since.
After the First World War, Kristal moved to Lodz where he worked in the family confectionary factory, married and had two children.
But his life was disrupted when Jewish quarter of the city became a ghetto under Nazi occupation during World War II and Kristal was sent to the infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Some 1.1 million people, most of them European Jews, perished in the camp between 1940 and 1945 before it was liberated by Soviet forces.
His wife and two children died but Kristal survived, weighing just 37 kilos (81 pounds) at the end of the war, Kuperstoch told AFP.
“But he gained strength and then eventually travelled to Israel”, settling in the northern city of Haifa where he remarried and opened a sweet shop, she said.
She described Kristal as a “very positive man, very optimistic and with a good heart”.
In an interview with Israeli media several years ago, Kristal was once asked what he ate to live so long.
“There wasn’t always food in the camps. I ate what I was given. I eat to live, and I don’t live to eat,” he said.
The previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died in January at the age of 112.
Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997, was the oldest verified person ever — passing away in France aged 122 years and 164 days.
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That’s some achievement, good luck to him.
Didn’t they already award that to someone recently? Oh …..Ohhhh.
That title is cursed – everyone that get its dies.
But, in fairness a wonderful story, to come through such adversity.
Hoess,mengele,czerniakow…lodz and auschwitz…hard to believe anyone could outlive all that..a hero.
One in the eye for those natzi’s
Suck it Hitler!
Incredible to think, of the billions of people that were on this planet when Israel was born, every last one has died except him.
Except the woman who was four when he was born
I stand corrected. Oldest man does not equal oldest person. Still an incredible thought.
Amazing someone born in 1800s is still alive..
I’ve been drinking, but 1903 does not mean 1800′s……..
He opened a sweet shop so eating sweets must be the secret to long life.. I’ll keep eating the milky moos and live in hope! Good on him to go through that horror it just doesnt bear thinking about
Selling sweets, is the secret to a long life! Not eating them..
Great story. All the best to him.
Goes to show, humans can survive catastrophies and monsters. Some tales in that man, some dignity, lots of respect. Shalom and may he live to tell his tale for another day! Great living proof that the Nazis actually didn’t succeed in eradicating a certain belief and its people, he can say now: been there got loads of Tshirts… Mazeltov young man!
Hard as nails..
Hitler must be doing loops in his grave
The World’s Oldest Man Has Been Named A Holocaust Survivor.
What are you trying to say the Holocaust is just s title ?
So we’ll see the same in 100 yrs, but from the Syria crisis that’s happening today while the world is watching on one hand & disgusted by the holocaust in he other. Beggars belief !
What a lovely story…may he live for many more years x
It’s amazing how many people survived the holocaust.
World Jewish Population pre and post WW2;
World Almanac, 1938, pg. 510 — world Jewish population = 15,748,091, with 240,000 in Germany
American Jewish Committee Bureau of the Synagogue Council, 1939 — 15,600,000
World Almanac, 1940, pg. 129: World Jewish Population — 15,319,359
World Almanac USA, 1947, pg. 748: World Jewish Population — 15,690,000
World Almanac, 1949, pg. 289: World Jewish Population — 15,713,638
Statistical Handbook of Council of Churches USA 1951 — 15,300,000
Changed his name to Israel at some stage..
I believe his name is Yisrael, and it would have been common enough to name a child Yisrael in the Orthodox community. Hebrew for Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People.
Allegedly
Does Guinness staff just catch the next flight from the funeral of the previous oldest man to hand these certificates out or what do they consider is a respectable waiting time to advertise themselves on the achievements of others?
A man for all seasons. Keep on trucking Israel.
Mozel Tof
In your face Nazis!
Sorry – but I don’t believe a word of it, not one red cent of it, he looks like he’s in his 70′s or 80′s tops, that combined with the Zionist obsession of constantly drip feeding us on an alleged ‘Holocaust’ guilt trip, their near total control of the mass media, and their faking of passports (Irish included) to torture and murder enemies in hotel rooms while disguised as tennis racket wielding tourists.
I would be nervous of out living my kids.
Is that Mark from ‘A League Of Their Own’ in the photos?
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