Imi Lichtenfeld — The Wrestler Who Built a Combat System

Imrich "Imi" Lichtenfeld (1910–1998) was a champion wrestler, boxer, and gymnast in inter-war Czechoslovakia. His father Samuel was a circus acrobat turned chief detective inspector who ran a self-defense club in Bratislava called Hercules, where Imi grew up training and later coaching.

From sport to street

In the mid-1930s, fascist gangs began attacking Jews in Bratislava. Imi led groups of athletes — wrestlers, boxers, weightlifters — to defend their neighborhoods. The fights showed him that sport techniques alone didn't survive contact with armed, motivated attackers in confined spaces.

He started building a system around three observations: (1) the average person needs to fight effectively under stress without years of training, (2) defenses must work against weapons, and (3) every technique should be "finishable" — ending the threat, not scoring a point.

Escape and Palestine

In 1940 Imi escaped the Nazi advance on the ship Pencho, was shipwrecked, served briefly in the Czech Legion under British command, and eventually reached Mandate Palestine in 1942. He joined the Haganah, where senior officers — recognizing what he had — assigned him to teach hand-to-hand combat to elite units.

The IDF years

When Israel was founded in 1948 Imi became Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the newly formed IDF School of Combat Fitness. He held the post for around two decades, formalizing the curriculum, training generations of military instructors, and adapting techniques to the realities of conscript training cycles.

Civilian Krav Maga

After retiring from the IDF in 1964, Imi spent the rest of his life adapting the military system for civilians, women, children, and law enforcement. The first civilian schools opened in Netanya and Tel Aviv, and in 1978 he co-founded the Israeli Krav Maga Association. His top students — Eyal Yanilov, Darren Levine, Haim Gidon and others — went on to build the international federations that exist today.