Krav Maga has the honor of being the world’s only fighting style designed to protect citizens on the streets against literal anti-Semitic fascists. In something that sounds like a mythologized origin story, Krav has roots in 1930s Bratislava, a city in what was once Czechoslovakia, now the capital of Slovakia in the country’s southwest corner, about two hours from Budapest. 

Leading up to World War II, Jews became targeted for violence across Europe. As Krav Maga Worldwide tells us, Imi Lichtenfeld, son of a prominent police detective in Bratislava, leveraged skills borrowed from boxing and wrestling to arm his local Jewish community against assaults and riots. He then emigrated to North Africa and joined the Free Czechoslovak Legion, a volunteer armed forces unit composed of Czechs and Slovaks working together with World War II’s Allied Forces. Lichtenfeld wound up drawing the attention of the Israeli paramilitary group Haganah while there, and passed along his training to them, with a heavy emphasis on close-quarters combat and disarming opponents. After the war he was hired by the newly formed Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to train soldiers.

Lichtenfeld became the Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga (which translates as “contact combat,” per Urban Fit and Fearless) at the IDF School of Combat Fitness. When he retired he took his knowledge to the private sector and founded the Krav Maga Association. Only as recently as 1983 did Krav arrive in the United States.