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Krav Maga- Israel Art Of Self Defense

Imi Lichtenfeld  Sde-Or, founder of Krav Maga, was born in 1910 in Budapest and grew up in Bratislava in a home where sports, law, and Central European education were equally respected. Imi's father was  self-defense chief instructor for the police force and with his encouragement, Imi became active in a wide range of sports: swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. In the mid thirties, conditions began to change in Bratislava. Fascist and anti-Semitic groups appeared, determined to upset the public order and harm the city's Jewish community. Imi became the un-crowned leader of a group of young Jews, most of them with a background in boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting. This group defended the right of the Jewish population against anti-Semitism. Imi escaped the Nazis and arrived in Israel in 1948.

He immediately started to teach and developed Krav Maga as self-defense for the soldiers and the police. He wrote and devised a manual of self-defense, which became the self-defense bible for the army and the police. His system was made up of simple attack and defense techniques for short courses and some of the techniques for life and death situations. Its motto was: "never do more than necessary, but do it with speed, simplicity and decisiveness". He always said: "not the strongest techniques but the fastest". Imi lived most of his life in Natanya, near the sea. He was a quite humble man. He never stopped talking about his Krav Maga. In his last years of his life, he spent many hours in a cafe (Ugati) in Natanya speaking to his admires pupils and friends. Imi promoted four of his top students to 8th Dan.   Among them, Eli Avikzar who is teaching now "Krav Magen Israeli" and Haim Zut who is teaching " Krav Maga - Kapap".

Imi was to his pupils a father before he was a teacher.

Imi Lichtenfeld, father of the Israeli Krav Maga passes away in 1998 at the age of 87.

After he passed away, Imi was inducted to the international Martial Arts Hall of Fame as the founder of Krav Maga.

 Written by Dennis Hanover