Holocaust survivor is world’s oldest man

Yisrael Kristal survived two World Wars and the Holocaust but does not consider himself particularly remarkable, despite being named the world’s oldest living man on Friday at age 112.

The Israeli was born in what is now Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers’ first powered and controlled aeroplane flight.

He lived there after the First World War until the Nazi occupation in World War II, when he was eventually sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Mr Kristal survived and moved to Israel, where he has lived for over six decades.

Guinness World Records confirmed on Friday he was now considered the world’s oldest living man, but Mr Kristal remained modest. “I don’t know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why,” he said in a statement on Friday. “There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men than me who are no longer alive.”

His daughter Shula Koperstoch was more excited. “It’s a privilege (to have reached this age) and I’m very happy and he’s happy too. It’s really a privilege,” she said.

Marco Frigatti, head of Records for Guinness, said, “Kristal’s achievement is remarkable — he can teach us all an important lesson about the value of life and how to stretch the limits of human longevity.”

The previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died in January at the age of 112.

The oldest living woman, at 116 years old, is Susannah Mushatt Jones, of the US, who was born on July 6, 1899.