page_title: Yisrael Kristal
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Yisrael Kristal / Early life
caption_attribution_description: עברית: תמונה מתוך תעודה המעידה על שנת לידתו של ישראל קרישטל, שהונפקה ב-1931, כשהיה בן 28, התגלתה בפולין ונמסרה למשפחה
context_page_description: Yisrael Kristal was a Polish-Israeli supercentenarian recognized in 2014 as the oldest living Holocaust survivor. After the death of Yasutaro Koide, of Japan, on January 18, 2016, he was also recognized as the oldest living man in the world as well as one of the ten oldest men ever at his death at age 113 years and 330 days.
  Born in 1903 to religious parents in Maleniec, Końskie County, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, Kristal remained religiously observant all his life.
  A confectioner by profession, he experienced World War I as an early teen, and World War II as an adult. After surviving the Holocaust, he emigrated to Israel.
context_section_description: Kristal was born to a religious Jewish family in Maleniec, Końskie County near Żarnów, then part of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire, on September 15, 1903. His father was a Torah scholar who ensured his son had a religious education, and Kristal would remain religiously observant all his life. He attended a cheder at age three, where he studied Judaism and Hebrew. He learned the Hebrew Bible at four and the Mishnah at six. In a 2012 interview, he recalled his father waking him at five in the morning to begin his religious instruction.
  His mother died in 1910 when he was seven years old. After World War I broke out in 1914, he saw Kaiser Franz Joseph in person when the monarch rode through his town in a car, and recalled them throwing sweets as he passed. His father was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, he was taken prisoner and died soon after the war. Meanwhile, Kristal moved in with his uncles.
  In 1920, at age 17, he moved to Łódź. After briefly laboring as a metalworker, he opened a candy store with an uncle. While initially working as a physical laborer, he later became a renowned expert candy-maker. He married Chaja Feige Frucht in 1928, and had two children.
caption: Yisrael Kristal in Poland 1931, aged 28
exif: {}