Yisrael Kristal (Courtesy of the family)
After being unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah 100 years ago during WWI, Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, nearly 113 and the oldest man in the world, will soon celebrate that momentous coming of age.
Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, who is almost 113 and the oldest male in the world, will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah soon, a century after missing the occasion during World War I.
At the time, his father was serving in the Russian army and his mother had passed away when he 10, so his Bar Mitzvah was not celebrated.
Kristal’s daughter Shulamit Kuperstoch told the German DPA news agency that his family will be with him to celebrate the joyous occasion.
In March, he was declared the world’s oldest man by Guinness World Records.
Kristal was born in 1903 to an Orthodox Jewish family near the town of Zarnow in Poland. He moved to Lodz to work in the family confectionery business in 1920. During the Nazi occupation of Poland he was confined to the ghetto there and later sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. His first wife and two children were murdered in the Holocaust.
Kristal survived World War II weighing only 37 kilograms (about 81 pounds) — the only survivor of his large family. He remarried and moved to Israel in 1950 with his second wife and their son.
In Israel, Kristal continued to grow both his family and his successful confectionery business.
“The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” Kuperstoch, told the Jerusalem Post in March. “He believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an angry person…he believes everything has a reason in the world. My father is someone who is always happy. He is optimistic, wise, and he values what he has.”
“His attitude to life is everything in moderation,” she added. “He eats and sleeps moderately, and says that a person should always be in control of their own life and not have their life control them, as far as this is possible.”
By: World Israel News Staff
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