While most boys celebrate their bar mitzvah on their 13th birthday, Israel Kristal said "the hardships of WWI" got in the way of his rite of passage.
This Auschwitz survivor is the oldest man in the world, and after waiting exactly 100 years, he's finally celebrating his bar mitzvah.
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Israel Kristal, who turned 113 years old Thursday, was awarded the Guinness World Record for the oldest man in the world earlier this year.
But, the experience was not quite complete when he remembered he had never celebrated the Jewish tradition of becoming a man.
While most boys celebrate their bar mitzvah on their 13th birthday, Kristal, born in Poland in 1903, said "the hardships of WWI" got in the way of his rite of passage.
"When my father was 13 years old, it was the first World War," his daughter recalled to German newspaper, The Local. "His father was in the Russian army, his mother had died three years before. No one was celebrating in this moment."
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But, 100 years after what should have been his big day, Kristal is preparing to revisit his youth, and finally raise a glass to his bar mitzvah.
"We’re going to celebrate with many family members," his daughter said. "We will bless him, we will dance with him, we’ll be happy with him… [but] you can’t feel like you’re 13 when you’re 113."
The Guinness World Records told InsideEdition.com they do not currently have a record-holder for the oldest person to be Bar mitzvahed because they do not monitor it as a category.
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