A Holocaust survivor may be the oldest man alive - but Palestinians think they got him beat

Times of Israel and JSpacenews reports:

An Israeli Holocaust survivor may be the world’s oldest man at 112, Guinness World Records confirmed Thursday, providing he can find the documents to prove it.

Yisrael Kristal’s family say he was born in Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers took the first airplane flight.

He lived in the country until the Nazi occupation during World War II, when he was eventually sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology at Guinness World Records, confirmed that if proven, he would become the oldest man currently on record.

To do so, however, Kristal would have to produce documents from the early years of his life. Currently, the family have said the oldest document they have is from his wedding aged 25.

“We have standard rules and it would be unfair on other people if we bent the rules,” Young told AFP, while expressing sympathy for Kristal’s circumstances.

Born on Sept. 15, 1903, in the town of Zarnow, Kristal moved to Lodz in 1920 to work in his family’s candy business. He continued operating the business after the Nazis forced the city’s Jews into a ghetto, where Kristal’s two children died. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, where his wife, whom he had married at age 25, was killed.

In 1950, he moved to Haifa with his second wife and their son, working again as a confectioner.

Kristal’s daughter Shula Kuperstoch told The Jerusalem Post that he has been religiously observant his whole life and continues to lay tefillin each morning.

“The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” Kuperstoch said. “He believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks to an accounting, he believes everything has a reason in the world.” 

TOI concludes:

The previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died on Tuesday at the age of 112.

The oldest living woman, at 116 years old, is Susannah Mushatt Jones, who was born on July 6, 1899.

Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997, was the oldest verified person ever — passing away in France aged 122 years and 164 days.

Not according to the Palestinians.

Last week Arab media reported that the oldest person in the world had just died - and he was 127 years old.

Haj Recep Toum was supposedly born in 1885 in Jabalya, Gaza and his grandchildren claim to have his birth certificate.

He also claims to have married one of his relatives who died only ten years ago, which may mean that he had the longest marriage in history as well.

Somehow that information hasn't made it to the folks at Guinness.

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