Evelyn Kozak | Among world's oldest, 113

The world's oldest Jewish person, Evelyn Kozak, whose family fled Russia to escape anti-Semitism in the 1880s, died Tuesday at 113. Mrs. Kozak had suffered a heart attack the day before, her granddaughter Brucha Weisberger said. She was buried next to her parents in a Brooklyn cemetery.

Mrs. Kozak was the world's oldest documented Jewish person and the world's seventh-oldest person, said Robert Young, a senior database administrator at the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, an organization of physicians, scientists, and engineers who validate supercentenarians, people 110 or older.

While a series of strokes about three years ago left Mrs. Kozak in a wheelchair and paralyzed on her right side, her mind was sharp, Weisberger said Thursday.

Mrs. Kozak, who was born in New York, spent much of her adult life in Miami, where she ran a boarding house for many years. She was married twice but had been a widow since 1957. She had five children, 10 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.

The world's oldest person, Misao Okawa, of Japan, is 115, the Gerontology Research Group said. - AP