World’s oldest man, Holocaust survivor, passes away at 114

Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, 114, the oldest man in the world, has passed away.

Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, who celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 113, passed away over the weekend at his home in Haifa at the age of 114.

In March 2016, he was declared the world’s oldest man by Guinness World Records following the death of 112-year-old Japanese Yasutaro Koide.

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 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’s family continued to grow, as well as his successful confectionery business.

“The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” Kristal’s daughter Shulamit Kuperstoch told the Jerusalem Post in March 2016. “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.”

Kristal is survived by two children, nine grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.

By: World Israel News Staff

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