Imi Lichtenfeld
Imre was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and grew up in Pozsony (now Bratislava). His father, Samuel Lichtenfeld, was a chief inspector on the Bratislava police force and a former circus acrobat. Imi trained at the Hercules Gym, which was owned by his father Samuel who taught self-defense. As a young man, Imi was a successful boxer and wrestler. Imi competed at National and International levels and was a champion and member of the Slovakian National Wrestling Team
In the late 1930s, anti-Semitic riots threatened the Jewish population of Bratislava. Together with other Jewish boxers and wrestlers, Lichtenfeld helped to defend his Jewish neighborhood against fascist gangs. He quickly realised that sport has little in common with real combat and began developing a system of techniques for practical self-defense in life threatening situations.
In 1935 Imi visited Palestine with a team of Jewish wrestlers to participate in the Maccabi games but could not participate because of a broken rib that resulted from his training while on route. This led the fundamental Krav Maga precept, “do not get hurt while training”. Imi returned to Czechoslovakia to face increasing anti-Semitic violence. Imi organized a group of young Jews to protect his community. On the streets, Imi acquired hard won experience and the crucial understanding of the differences between sport fighting and street fighting. He developed his fundamental self-defense principle: “Use natural movements and reactions” for a defense combined with an immediate and decisive counterattack. From this evolved the refined theory of “simultaneous defense and attack” while “never occupying two hands in the same defensive movement.”
In 1940, Lichtenfeld fled the Nazi occupation of his homeland, heading for Palestine. Imi arrived in Israel in 1942 after serving with great notoriety in the Czech Legion. Israel’s early leaders immediately recognized Imi’s fighting prowess and innovativeness. Imi began to train Israel’s first fighting units the Palmach, Palyam, and Haganah in military close quarters combat. This training included fighting fitness, bayonet tactics, sentry removal, knife fighting, stave/stick fighting and any other military oriented problems that required a creative solution. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, he became the Chief Instructor of Physical Training in the Israel Defense Forces. It was during this time that his system came to be called Krav Maga
In 1964, Lichtenfeld retired from the Israeli military. He then modified Krav Maga to fit the needs of police forces and ordinary civilians. Imi trained teams of Krav Maga instructors who were accredited by him and the Israeli Ministry of Education. He also created the Israeli Krav Maga Association and then the Israeli Krav Maga Federation and The International Krav Maga Federation with Eyal Yanilov. Imi passed in 1998, Netanya, Israel at the age of 87 but his legacy lives on.