(Newswire.net — August 13, 2017) –Yisrael Kristal was born on the 15th of September 1903, in the village of Zarnow, about 90 miles south-west of Warsaw, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire.
In 1920 he moved to Lodz and opened a candy store with his uncle. He lived there with his wife Chaja Feige Frucht and two of their children.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, Kristal and his family were moved into the Lodz ghetto, where both of his children died.
In 1940 Kristal and his wife were sent to Auschwitz – a complex of German Nazi concentration camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas, annexed by Nazi Germany during World War Two.
Mr Kristal’s wife was murdered in Auschwitz but Yisrael survived. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, of whom at least 1.1 million died.
His family said the he didn’t speak much about his experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but according to a report, when Soviet soldiers rescued Yisrael Kristal in Auschwitz in May 1945, he weighed just 81 pounds.
In the following years, life wasn’t as hard for the Holocaust survivor.
Kristal got married again. His second wife Batsheva was also a survivor of the Holocaust. They emigrated to Israel in 1950 where he continued to run his confectionery business.
He had two children – a son Chaim, who was born in Poland, and a daughter Shula, who was born in Israel, and he also had nine grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In March 2016, he was officially recognized as the world’s oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records.
According to the Haaretz newspaper he said it wasn’t a big deal to be the oldest man in the World.
He admitted that he did not know the secret to a long life, and he said: “There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men than me who are no longer alive.”
Guinness World Records will announce who the new holder of title “Oldest Man in the World” is after they review other candidates.