Imi Lichtenfeld nació el 26 de Mayo de 1910.

Born in 26 of may of 1910 in Budapest, which was located at the center of Austro-Hungarian Empire, Imi was raised in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia.

His family education was based in sports, law and medicine. His father, Samuel, was the chief of the local secret service and was known as the agent who caught the most criminals. Besides this, he was also an instructor for grappling techniques in the secret police. With his father's incentive, Imi practiced many different sports. Between 1928 and 1929, he won many European wrestling championships and in that year he became a boxing champion.

In the following decade, Imi focused his training as a wrestling athlete and instructor, winning many medals in national and international competitions. Ever since the mid-thirties, life in Bratislava was not the same anymore. Fascist groups slowly won political ground, therefore, changing the life in that country. Imi then became the leader of a resistance group that fought the Fascists groups. Between the years of 1936 and 1940, he participated in countless missions and violent confrontations, being alone or in a team. Imi and his colleagues fought hundreds, thousands of enemies in a cruel and unfair war. All of these events and personal experiences resulted in the strengthening of his body and spirit, preparing him for the events yet to come, and planting the seeds that germinated, resulting in the creation of Krav Maga.

In 1940, Imi left his homeland, his family and friends and boarded the last ship that managed to flee from the Nazis. It was nothing more than a simple raft, called "Pentcho", which was adapted to transport hundreds of people who left Europe with Israel as their final destination. The stories of this raft and its passengers became famous, and were described in the book "The Odyssey", written by John Birman. The “Odyssey” of Imi lasted 2 years, during which, in many occasions, he jumped in the water to save the lives of passengers or a valuable bag of food in the frozen Danube River . These "adventures" gave him a strong ear infection that almost led him to death. After an explosion at the gas tank of the ship, which happened near the coast of the Greek Islands , his help was requested. After four days and nights of great effort, Imi was taken in a terrible health condition to Alexandria , where he underwent many surgeries.

Recovered, he joined the Czech Army that fought together with the British Army. And it was in this way that he fought in the middle-east, in combats in Libya , Syria , Lebanon and Egypt . In the year of 1942, he then retired from the army and received a license to live in Israel , where a new phase of his life would begin.

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