Stephen Klein

Immi's Jewish Self Defense

This is a historical novel based on the real events between the years 1936 and 1940, a period of the rise of fascist populist anti-Semitic party in Bratislava, Slovakia, which serves as the background for an imaginary eye-witness account of the heroism of Immi Litchtenfeld and his friends and associates. It was during this dark period that Immi developed a system of self-defense that is widely practiced throughout the world today, known as "Krav Maga." Faced by angry anti-Semitic mob attacks on the Jewish Quarter of the city, Immi had to develop a system of self-defense for people who were outnumbered and without experience in physical confrontations. Immi had won national acclaim in boxing, wrestling, and gymnastics, but after he witnessed the violence and the constant threat to the Jewish community, he decided to turn his entire orientation to self-defense and to promote it as a viable answer to the fascist violence. Using his father's gym as a base for training, Immi's set out to convince his trainees that they could overcome an adversary that would be physically superior both in numbers and in strength. The beauty of his system was its basic simplicity, which made long periods of complicated training unnecessary. Basically, the idea was to learn how to block an attack and then to strike at vital areas of the body. The attacker became the victim. When survival was at stake, all rules of sportsmanship had to be thrown to the wayside. However, this book is much more than a group's struggle against fascism. It is the day to day life of Immi and his friends who continued to live, laugh, and love, despite the continuous tension they were under.