The world's
oldest man turned 113 on Thursday and the Holocaust survivor living in Israel
readied for the Bar Mitzvah he was denied a century ago, his family said.
Yisrael
Kristal, an observant Jew from Zarnow in what is now Poland and currently
living in the port city of Haifa, was born on September 15, 1903, three months
before the Wright brothers' first successful powered airplane flight.
Guinness
World Records in March recognised him as the world's oldest man.
While he
turned 113 on Thursday under the Gregorian calendar, his family will celebrate
the birthday at the end of September according to the Hebrew calendar, his
daughter Shula Koperstoch told AFP.
The
festivities will include a Bar Mitzvah that will come 100 years late.
The Bar
Mitzvah is one of the most important ceremonies in the life of a Jew.
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 their 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.
"My
father is religious and has prayed every morning for 100 years, but he has
never had his Bar Mitzvah," his daughter said.
Around 100
family members will attend, with the date and location being kept secret to
avoid Kristal having to contend with a crush of journalists, she said.
Asked about
his health, Koperstoch said only: "He is ageing."
After World
War I, Kristal moved to Lodz where he worked in the family confectionary
factory, married and had two children.
But his
life was disrupted when the Jewish quarter of the city became a ghetto under
Nazi occupation during World War II and Kristal was sent to the infamous Nazi
death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Around 1.1
million people, most of them European Jews, perished in the camp between 1940
and 1945 before it was liberated by Soviet forces.
His wife
and two children died but Kristal survived, weighing just 37 kilos (81 pounds)
at the end of the war.
He then
moved to Israel, where he has lived for over six decades. He re-married, had a
son and opened a sweet shop.
He is four
years younger than the world's oldest woman, Emma Morano, an Italian who turns
117 in November -- meaning she was born in the 19th century.
The
previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died in January at the age of
112.
Jeanne
Louise Calment, who died in 1997, was the oldest verified person ever --
passing away in France aged 122 years and 164 days.
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