Krav Maga was created in the 1940s by Imi Lichtenfeld and has long been considered a secret weapon of the Israeli armed forces. Imi (Imrich) Sedé Or (Lichtenfeld) was born on May 26, 1910, in Budapest, and grew up in Bratislava in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, who rigorously enforced discipline in their family life, was chief of the secret police and responsible for hand-to-hand combat lessons. During his youth, Imi was passionate about sports and became a boxing and wrestling champion by the age of 18. As a natural-born leader, Imi formed resistance groups when the fascist and anti-Semitic movement began in Europe; despite being outnumbered against the attackers, he participated in street fights and successfully protected the local community. In 1939, Imi started thinking about immigrating to the region of Israel, which was under British mandate at the time. In 1940, intending to put his plan into action, he boarded a boat with hundreds of people living in precarious conditions. On the vessel, called Pentcho, Imi acted like a true hero, rescuing everything and everyone falling overboard, but his heroic actions almost cost his life, as the accumulation of liquids in his ear led to extreme inflammation. After the vessel shipwrecked near Greece, Imi was rescued by the British navy in a small rowboat led by volunteers and was rushed to a hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, for an emergency surgery to control his ear infection. Upon recovering, he joined the British Armed Forces, where he served for two years. In 1942, Imi finally arrived in ISrael, where he became head of self-defense for Hagana (one of the groups fighting for independence from Israel), thus creating the future of Krav Maga. During this time, he developed and refined the most effective, efficient, and dynamic self-defense and attack tactics using instincts. In 1948, Imi became a fitness trainer and Chief Instructor of hand-to-hand combat and self-defense for the Israel Defense Force (IDF). In 1964, he retired from the military and established his first training center for civilians in the city of Natanya. Imi passed away on January 9, 1998, at the age of 87. The world has lost a great man, who changed the perspective of life, thought, peace, loyalty, and respect.