‘Miracle that came true in front of our eyes.’
The 113-year-old Yisrael Kristal – the oldest man in the world according to the Guinness World Record – celebrated his bar mitzvah, the Jewish religious initiation ceremony, last weekend.
Bar mitzvah is usually celebrated at the age of 13. But, Kristal missed the Jewish coming of age ceremony because of the outbreak of World War 1. The friends and family members of Kristal had gathered at his home in Haifa, Israel to attend the function held on Saturdaymorning.
“This was a miracle that came true in front of our eyes,” said his daughter, Shulimath Kristal Kuperstoch, reported CBS.
Born in a small Polish village in 1903, Kristal lost his mother when he was seven. His father was press-ganged into the Russian army four years later when the war began but never returned. Kristal was brought up by his relatives after his father left him.
“My father told my son not to take his bar mitzvah for granted, saying that not everyone was lucky enough to have one,” said Kuperstoch.
“He said the same thing to his great grandsons when they had their bar mitzvahs, so it obviously affected him,” she added.
Kristal married Chaja Frucht in and trained as a confectioner in the 1920’s after moving to the Polish city of Lodz. Soon he became a popular confectioner and started working for German soldiers.
The couple had two boys who died of illness in 1944. The couple was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp when the Nazis captured the city. He was put to work at the camp, but his wife died soon.
“My father was strong and not emaciated as he hadn’t been starved in the ghetto,” said Kuperstoch. “Still, the terrible conditions in the concentration camps meant that by the end of the war in April 1945, he weighed only 37 kilos.”
Kristal was the only member of his family who survived the holocaust. He returned to Lodz after a long rehabilitation and married Batsheva Judah who had also lost her entire family. Kristal came to Israel in 195o and became a successful confectioner.
Kristal now has a large family including children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. However, Kristal does not know the reason for his long life.
“I don’t know the secret. I believe that everything is determined from above, and we shall never know the reasons why. There have been smarter, stronger and better-looking men than me who are no longer alive. All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what was lost,” Kristal said in a statement.