An Auschwitz survivor who became the world’s oldest man has died in Haifa at the age of 113.
Yisrael Kristal was born in 1903 in Malienec, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). Moving to Lodz in his late teens, he worked in the family confectionary business, marrying and having two children.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Mr Kristal and his family were forced into the Lodz ghetto, where his two children died. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1944, he and his wife were deported to Auschwitz. He managed to survive the Nazi death camp, although being subjected to slave labour, but she did not.
After the war Mr Kristal initially returned to Lodz, where he remarried, before moving to Israel in 1950, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He continued to work in the confectionary business until his retirement. In March of last year the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed him as the world’s oldest man.
