Validation of 113-Year Old Israel Kristal as the World’s Oldest Man

This book chapter provides a detailed description of the discovery, research, and validation of the case of Mr. Israel Kristal of Israel, 113, as the World’s Oldest Man titleholder for Guinness World Records. In this chapter, we show how modern scientific age validation criteria were applied to prove the credibility of the claims made about Mr. Kristal’s age. Due to the hardships Mr. Kristal faced in his early life, validating his age proved to be extremely difficult. While the first attempts to validate Mr. Kristal’s age were made in early 2014, a breakthrough in these investigative efforts did not occur until January 2016. To validate his age, the Gerontology Research Group contacted not only Mr. Kristal’s family, but also international institutions specializing in genealogical research. A special note of appreciation should go to the Jewish Records Indexing in Poland for their contributions to this investigation. As a result of this international cooperation, sufficient early-life, middle-life, and late-life evidence was obtained to meet modern validation standards. Israel Kristal was finally recognized as the oldest living man in the world on Mar. 11, 2016 (retroactive to Jan. 19, 2016). Israel Kristal is the second validated supercentenarian in the history of Israel, after Dr. Maria Pogonowska (1897–2009), who was also born in Poland. In addition, he is the current longevity record-holder of Israel.

death. In September 2016, Israel Kristal turned 113 years of age, and the family celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. This coming of age ritual is traditionally held at the time of a Jewish boy's 13th birthday, but Israel Kristal was unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah 100 years previously because when he turned 13, World War I was raging and his family was separated. He died at his home in Haifa on Aug. 11, 2017, at the age of 113 years and 330 days (Stephenson 2017).

Research
The research performed to validate Mr. Kristal's age turned out to be very challenging. The investigation lasted a total of 2 years, and can be broken down into four phases.

Phase I (May 2014 -July 2014)
Reports that Mr. Israel Kristal was the oldest living Holocaust survivor first appeared upon the passing of Alice Herz-Sommer in the spring of 2014 (even though he was already older than she was). This marked the beginning of the validation effort. Some early reports mistakenly named his place of birth as Tarnów (instead of Żarnów), a city located in Lesser Poland Voivodeship. Thus, an attempt to obtain a record of his birth from the Tarnów registry office was unsuccessful. The focus of the investigation shifted to confirming that Mr. Kristal had lived in the Jewish ghetto in the occupied city of Łódź. With the assistance of GRG-Germany correspondent Stefan Jamin, we obtained several registration lists from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto dated from 1940 to 1942, which provided middle-life evidence of Mr. Kristal's age. We then suspended our research because of the lack of sufficient information.
Phase II (August 2014-October 2014 The second phase of the research started when reports on Mr. Kristal's upcoming 111th birthday appeared in August 2014. At that time, more detailed information about Mr. Kristal's place of birth was disclosed, which indicated that Mr. Kristal had been born in Żarnów, not Tarnów. Further research was therefore performed at the local archive unit in Piotrków Trybunalski and at the registry office of Żarnów. The Jewish registry books from both places were checked, but the requested birth record was not found. There were two gaps in the documentation. The books of births for the years 1905 and 1907 for Żarnów synagogue district were reported as missing, and no entry for Mr. Kristal's birth could be found in the Żarnów birth registry books for the years 1903, 1904, 1906, 1908, or 1909. Independently, the registry office of Żarnów checked the Jewish community's birth records until 1945, but could find no mention of the name Kristal. At that time, it was common practice among Jewish families in Poland to report the births of several of their children in a single year. Hence, it was possible that the children of Moszek-Dawid Kristal, Israel's father, were reported in one of the missing years. We continued our research in the Łódź archive in the hopes of discovering a registration list that included Israel Kristal's name. Meanwhile, we filed a request with the Kielce archive to grant us permission to research the population lists for Żarnów. Unfortunately, neither the research in Łódź nor in Żarnów proved fruitful. Researchers at the Łódź archive combed through the collections of the Łódź Jewish religious community, electoral lists of the Jewish religious community in Łódź, alphabetical lists of taxpayers of the school and synagogue in Łódź, city acts of Łódź, and records of the resident population of Łódź for the years 1903-1931. Still, the name of Israel Kristal was nowhere to be found. By October 2014, it appeared that the research on Mr. Kristal had hit a dead end. Phase III (July 2015-December 2015) The third phase began when we established contact with Mr. Oren Kristal, Israel Kristal's grandson. Oren Kristal provided us with more detailed information about his grandfather's place of birth than had previously been reported: namely, that Israel had been born in a village with a name that could be translated into English as "Little nothing" (Polish: małe nic). After looking at the map of the region, found two villages that might fit this account: Malenie and Maleniec, both of which were within the Żarnów synagogue district. Meanwhile, Mr. Kristal provided us with additional materials, including middle life evidence dated to 1949 and 1955. Oren Kristal also gave us information on the exact place of Mr. Israel Kristal's first marriage, which he referred to as "Wingelsin." After a thorough examination of the maps of the region, we found the village of Węgleszyn, which lies 60 km south of Żarnów. Currently, Węgleszyn is located in Oksa Commune, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. When contacted, the registry office in Oksa said they did not have the record, and advised us to contact the state archive in Kielce. Another request was sent to the archive to investigate the population lists for the village of Malenie. The response to this inquiry, which arrived in October, was negative. However, it came to our attention that at the time of Mr. Kristal's marriage, Węgleszyn belonged to the Małogoszcz Commune and not the Oksa Commune, as was previously thought. When we called the Małogoszcz registry office in December, we finally made our long-awaited breakthrough. The record of Israel Kristal's first marriage to Chaja Feige Frucht from 1928 was discovered. Although the document was not issued within the first 20 years of the claimant's life, and thus does not meet modern earlylife evidence standards, the chances that Mr. Kristal's reported age was authentic increased substantially with this discovery. Under a law enacted by the Second Polish Republic, all Polish brides and grooms, including all Jewish couples, were required to present a valid document verifying their reported date of birth, such as an extract of a birth record, if they wished to marry in another synagogue district. As Israel Kristal had been born in the Żarnów synagogue district but was marrying in Węgleszyn, he would have been required to present such a document. Due to some bureaucratic issues, we had difficulties obtaining that particular document. Although we also asked for permission to research the population lists of the other, similar sounding village of Maleniec and the village of Węgleszyn, we were unable to obtain any new information from these lists due to the lack of surviving documentation. Oren Kristal confirmed reports that the Kristal family was impoverished at the time Mr. Kristal's father was called to serve in the army, and that his mother had died young. As we pieced this story together, it became clear that young Israel's family was in such dire straits by the time he reached age 13 that he was unable to follow the Jewish tradition of celebrating his Bar Mitzvah. Because Mr. Kristal had no Bar Mitzvah celebration, there was no document providing evidence of his age for that period of time.
Phase IV (January 2016-February 2016) Mr. Yasutaro Koide of Japan, the GWR-and GRG-recognized World's Oldest Man, passed away on Jan. 19, 2016, at the grand age of 112, leaving Israel Kristal as a leading candidate for the Guinness World Records' title of World's Oldest Man. The research into Mr. Kristal's case entered the decisive phase soon thereafter. Also around that time, Mr. Kristal's life became a topic of interest for Haaretz journalists. We contacted Stanley Diamond and Michael Tobias of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, an organization specializing in the field of Jewish genealogy. They had contributed to the important discovery of the 1918 Łódź Registration Card for the Kristal family, on which Izrael Icek's name had been added when he reunited with his family in 1920. This evidence of his arrival in Łódź in order to work in the family's confectionery business was consistent with the reports and stories of the Kristal family. After the war, Mojżesz-Dawid Kristal settled in Łódź with his surviving family members. Young Israel was not present in Łódź at the time the record was made, but he joined his family 2 years later. This timeline explains why his name was added to the entry for the Kristal family in the 1918 Łódź census, and why a corresponding notification was added in the margin. At that point, a piece of earlylife evidence that meets modern validation standards had finally been discovered. Shortly thereafter, Oren Kristal provided us with late-life evidence in the form of an ID card issued in 2013, which was translated from Hebrew.

Validation
The age of Israel Kristal is confirmed by the following documents: (1918) 1918. His profession was recorded as glazier, which is in line with news reports and family stories. His religion was listed as Jewish and his nationality as Polish. Several other household members were also recorded: Perla, Zirman, Abram, Abram, and -importantly for the purposes of our study -"Izrael Icek", born in Malenie, on "1 V 1903" (see Fig. 20.1). It is notable that Izrael Icek was added to the list later, just as the 1920 paragraph says. This event accords with reports and family stories that claim that Israel Kristal, aged 17, arrived in Łódź in 1920 to work in the family confectionary business. He lived with his family at 27 Średnia Street, District V. The paragraph next to the addition of Izrael Icek's name was written on Oct. 29, 1920. Oren Kristal confirmed that the information on the document corresponds to a family story in which it was claimed that Israel's father did not know that his son was alive. According to this story, Israel, who had been on his own since the beginning of the war, was 16 years old when he left the farm where he had been working after the war ended, and walked barefoot until, a year later, he finally reunited with his father. This document is of crucial importance. It is the only piece of early-life evidence that supports the claim that Israel Kristal was born in 1903. Thus, the requirement of modern age validation standards that evidence from the first 20 years of life is provided has been met (Poulain, 2010 It should be noted that the name of Mr. Kristal's father appears in three different versions throughout the documentation. Which version was used varied depending on which country's administration was operating in the region at the time each record was made. The region was part of the Russian Empire until 1918, when it became part of Poland. Between 1915Between -1918Between and 1939Between -1945, the region was occupied by Germany. Mojżesz and Moszek are two Polish versions of the same name, while Mosche is the German version. The family name was also variously recorded as Kryształ, the Polish version; or as Kristal, the German and Yiddish version. Similarly, there were two versions of his mother's name: Brucha Rojt in Polish and Bracha Rojth in German and Yiddish. Litzmannstadt is the German name of the city of Łódź. According to his family's reports, which were confirmed by the 1918 Łódź census, the exact place of Mr. Kristal's birth was Malenie, a little village that

Conclusion
The authors confirmed the authenticity of Israel Kristal's age on the basis of the gathered documentation, which includes early-, middle-, and late-life evidence. The biggest concern that arose in the case of Israel Kristal was the lack of a birth record. Given that the census records are often a reflection of the respondents' memories, both May 1, 1903, andSept. 15, 1903, may have been manufactured dates of birth.
It is worth noting that one of Izrael Icek's brothers, Abram, was recorded as having the same date and month of birth. Hence, it is possible that the census enumerator wrote the same details twice, or that the younger Abram was an adopted child, as there were many war orphans at that time, and giving the same name to two children in a row was not common practice. The theory that the younger Abram was adopted is strengthened by the mother's death record from 1913, which mentions that she was survived by three children. The oldest of those children, Perla, would have been 20 at the time of the mother's death, so it is possible that she was no longer counted as a child. Based on our experiences in researching cases of extreme longevity and supercentenarians in Poland, we believe that reports of the ages of people born in the territory of present-day Poland are reliable, because in the early twentieth century, Poland had a well-developed system of birth registration. Moreover, cases of age exaggeration are rare in Poland, and the few cases that have occurred were mainly among the population of repatriates who may have misreported their age when they needed to produce new documents after moving from the territory of one country to the territory of another. Whether Israel Kristal had the need to recreate documents at any point in his life in Poland is unknown. It is peculiar that his delayed birth certificate, which he presented at the office where he married Chaja Frucht a few months after, listed the year (1903) but not the day and month of his birth, whereas his future wife was able to present a delayed birth certificate on which her full date of birth was recorded. Israel Kristal's case represents an important intermediate step in the expansion of the worldwide IDL and GRG databases into Poland and Israel. Mr. Kristal's age is significant, as it is one of the 10 oldest ages ever validated for men. Mr. Kristal is also the oldest Polish-born person on record, the oldest Jewish man on record, and the Guinness "World's Oldest Man" titleholder for over a year and a half (January 2016-August 2017). There is consistent documentation of Mr. Kristal's age from both of his countries of his residence: first Poland, and then Israel. His reported year of birth is consistently supported by all of the gathered evidence, including one document issued within his first 20 years of life. Thus, there is evidence that meets the early-life evidence requirements of modern validation standards. Given that Mr. Kristal was born in the area of present-day Poland, and not outside its modern eastern border, he is not among the population of emigrant supercentenarian claimants who have been suspected of age exaggeration. While some Polish individuals who claimed to be supercentenarians were found to have exaggerated their age, this exaggeration occurred while they were migrating between countries in the World War II era. It has been proven that Israel Kristal did not exaggerate his age either during the war or upon his migration from Poland to Israel (see Fig. 20.2; confirmed by the located evidence). The risk of age misreporting was therefore low in this case. As Poulain (2010) has pointed out, age validation is never definitive, and may always be reconsidered if a new piece of evidence that seems incompatible with the previous conclusion is discovered. In sum, given that the documents that were uncovered in the case of Israel Kristal span nearly a century and contain many unique identifiers that confirm his identity -and that the gathered documentation is consistent with the stories told by the family -we consider this case to be validated at least to the standard of validation by proxy, as an early-life census entry was substituted for the original proof of birth.
In conclusion, based past research of similar cases and the gathered evidence, Guinness World Records and the Gerontology Research Group deemed the case of Israel Kristal validated, with his official date of birth recognized as Sept. 15, 1903.

Fig. 20.2 Israel Kristal's claim was unaffected by the migration between countries
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.