After the death of Yasutaro Koide, of Japan, on 18 January 2016,[a] he was also recognized as the oldest living man.

Kristal was born to a religious Jewish family in Maleniec, Końskie County, near Żarnów, then part of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire, on 15 September 1903.

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 sweets being thrown as he passed.

[contradictory] Kristal's wife was murdered in Auschwitz; he worked as a forced laborer and survived.

He initially worked at the Palata candy factory, where he was considered an expert and taught the owners to make an entire production line of sweets.

He also had great-grandchildren, but his family preferred not to state his exact number of descendants for fear of the "evil eye".

[12] Following the death of 110-year-old Alice Herz-Sommer in London on 23 February 2014, Kristal became recognized as the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor (though he was actually a few months older than she was).

[5][13] He became the world's oldest living man on 18 January 2016, after the death of Japanese supercentenarian Yasutaro Koide.