The world’s oldest man died Friday at age 113, a month before his 114th birthday.
Yisrael Kristal, an Auschwitz survivor who was born in Poland, died after becoming ill on Thursday, his daughter said, the BBC reported. He was officially recognized as the world’s oldest man by the Guinness Book of World Records in March 2016.
Kristal lived in Haifa, Israel, and made headlines in 2016 for celebrating his bar mitzvah 100 years late. He hadn’t celebrated it in 1916 because of World War I breaking out, the BBC reported.
After growing up in Poland, Kristal worked in the family confectionary business until Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Kristal’s mother and father were killed during World War I, and his wife and children were killed during the Holocaust.
Kristal was sent to various concentration camps including Auschwitz where he performed slave labor, and he only weighed about 81 pounds when he was found by the Allies. He married another Holocaust survivor and moved to Israel in 1950, starting another successful confection business, the Times of Israel reported.
A devout Orthodox Jew, Kristal wrapped phylacteries — leather-wrapped cubes containing Torah scriptures and worn during prayer — daily for the last 100 years, the Times reported.
“Despite all that he went through, and he lost the whole family in the Holocaust, he had a lot of optimism, and he always saw only light and good in everything,” his daughter said, the BBC reported.
The new world’s oldest man is Spaniard Francisco Nunez Olivera, who is 112. The world’s oldest person is a woman, however: Jamaican Violet Brown is 117.
Twitter users gave their condolences on Kristal's passing.
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