Israel Kristal passed away 34 days before his 114th birthday

On Friday, the world's Oldest Man (Israel Kristal) passed away 34 days before his 114th birthday, according to Fox News. He survived World War I and II and was a prisoner at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He received the Guinness World Record for becoming the world’s oldest man in March 2016, when he managed to collect all the documents confirming the date of his birth. His daughter Shula Kupershtuch said, "He always saw only light and good in everything."

Israel Kristal's life

Kristal was born in 1903 in Poland. He came from a Jewish family. His grandson Oren said that during World War I, he helped a booze smuggler and even walked in the snow with no shoes.

After World War I, Kristal was orphaned and decided to continue the family confectionery business alone. In 1928 he married his first wife.

In 1940, when the fascists captured the city, he was placed in a ghetto with the rest of the Jews. However, he continued to keep a confectionery shop there. In his opinion, he survived only because the Germans liked his sweets. When the Nazi occupation started, Kristal was sent to concentration camp. During the Holocaust, his children died in 1940, and his wife in 1944.

During World War II, his weight was only 81.5 pounds. In 1947, he married a woman who also survived in Holocaust. After three years, the family moved to Israel and started a new confectionery business.

The couple had two children.

New life and new achievements by Israel

Israel's grandson said that “he was a very hard-working man, a lot of energy always running from one place to another doing something,”

Israel Kristal was an Orthodox Christian. In September 2016, 100 years after his 13th birthday, Kristal celebrated his Bar Mitzvah.

The celebration Bat Mitzvah is held at 13 for boys - the age when they become responsible for their actions. In 1916 he could not celebrate it because his mother died in June, and his father was a soldier in World War I.

"My father is religious and has prayed every morning for 100 years, but he has never had his Bar Mitzvah," said his daughter in 2016.

Kristal had many descendants: two children, nine grandchildren, and 32 great-grandchildren. When journalists asked him about the secret of his long life, Kristal replied that he was just lucky. According to the Reuters, the age of the world's oldest man was 113 years and 330 days.

According to the Guinness World Records, the longest living person was Jeanne Calment (French woman) who died at the age of 122 in 1997.