Kristal, who survived the holocaust, turned 113 years old on September 15, 2016. His family say he was born in Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers took the first aeroplane flight.
/ AFP PHOTO / SHULA KOPERSHTOUK
JERUSALEM — The world’s oldest man has celebrated his bar mitzvah — 100 years late.
The 113-year-old Israel Kristal has lived through both World Wars and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. Earlier this year, Guinness World Records awarded him a certificate as the world’s oldest man.
But there was a ceremony the supercentenarian observant Jew longed for more.
Born in Poland in 1903, Kristal missed his bar mitzvah — the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony celebrated when a boy turns 13 — because of World War I.
His daughter, Shulamith Kuperstoch, says Wednesday he gathered last weekend his children, grandchildren and nearly 30 great-grandchildren to mark the occasion. She says he was very pleased as he recited the traditional Jewish prayer of gratitude.
Kristal’s first wife and two children were killed in the Holocaust. TVJ