Israeli Holocaust Survivor Named World's Oldest Man

An Israeli Holocaust survivor living in Haifa has been named by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest man.

112 year-old Israel Kristal, born in 1903 in what is now Poland, received a certificate from Guinness following the death of a Japanese man, who was also 112, earlier this year. 

Kristal owned a chocolate factory in Poland before he was sent to Auschwitz following the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in the city of Lodz during World War II.  His children died in the ghetto and his wife was murdered at Auschwitz while he endured the internment doing forced labor.

After the war Kristal remarried and settled in Haifa.  He has a daughter, Shula Kuperstoch.  She told The Jerusalem Post that he attributes his survival to God.

"He believes he was saved because that's what God wanted.  He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks to an accounting.  He believes everything has a reason in the world," she said.

Kristal, the son of a Torah scholar, still recites his prayers daily from memory, due to poor eyesight.

 His daughter says her father's philosophy is moderation in all things.  "He says that if he had created some medicine to extend life then it would be something notable.  But his attitude is that he has just lived his life, and reached this age, it's just his reality, it wasn't in his hands.  That's what he believes," she explained.

Officials from the Gerontology Research Group, based in the U.S., are still working on Kristal's documentation, which includes his marriage certificate from the 1920's.  But he still will bear the title of the world's oldest living man.