Auschwitz survivor is world's oldest man, Guinness says

Yasutaro Koide of Japan was the previous oldest man.

Israel Kristal, who is 112 years and 178 days as of Friday, received his Guinness World Records' certificate at his home in Haifa.

"I don't know the secret for long life", Kristal said upon achieving the title. He added, solemn: "The smarter men, stronger and more handsome than I am no longer of this world".

Kristal has lived through both World Wars and survived the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in the 1940s before relocating to Israel, where he now lives with his family.

Born to a Jewish Orthodox family, Kristal never had a bar mitzvah, due to the hardships of the First World War.

In the early 1940s, Kristal was sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, where he performed slave labour. His first wife and two children were killed in the Holocaust.

In 1950, as the lone survivor of his family, he emigrated with his second wife and their son to Israel where he ran his confectionery business until his retirement.

Though he is now the oldest man in the world, 115-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones, from NY holds the record for the oldest documented person on the planet.

The oldest person ever to have lived is thought to be Jeanne Calment from France, who died aged 122 years and 164 days. There had been doubts that Guinness would recognize Kristal's claim because he has no birth certificate to prove his birth date.

Kristal was born on September 15, 1903 in a village in central Poland while it was still part of the Russian Empire.

Marco Frigatti, Head of Records for Guinness, said, "Kristal's achievement is remarkable - he can teach us all an important lesson about the value of life and how to stretch the limits of human longevity".

He had moved to Lodz by 1918 where he found work at a confectionery factory. He opened a candy story in Haifa where he raised his family with two children, his son Hemi Kristal and daughter Shula Kuperstoch.

GWR told Daily Star Online that Mr Kristal's family could not say how many grandchildren he had because of "religious and superstition" reasons - but 29 were present at their ceremony today.