World’s oldest man dies aged 113 — Israeli media
JERUSALEM: Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, certified last year by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man, died on Friday aged 113, Israeli media reported.
Since he was an observant Jew, his family could not be reached on Friday evening, the onset of the Jewish sabbath.
“Yisrael Kristal... died on Friday a month before his 114th birthday,” Haaretz daily reported in its online edition.
News site Ynet said he was survived by two children, 9 grandchildren and 32 greatgrandchildren.
The World Jewish Congress noted his passing in a brief Twitter statement.
“Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal was the oldest man in the world. Yisrael passed away today. May his memory be a blessing.”
Kristal, originally from Zarnow in what is now Poland, was born on Sept 15, 1903 — three months before the Wright brothers’ first successful powered airplane flight.
Guinness World Records recognised him as the world’s oldest man in March 2016.
In September, he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah after a century-long delay.
Usually marked at 13 for boys and 12 or 13 for girls — a Bat Mitzvah in that case — it marks the transition into someone responsible for his or her actions.
Kristal was unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in 1916 because his mother had died three months earlier and his father was a soldier in the Russian army at the time of World War I. — AFP