Mike Lee Kanarek

Who Is Mike Lee Kanarek?

If you have ever been on the mat or in the same room while Mike Lee Kanarek is teaching a class, a seminar or an advanced course you already know that he has the ability to literally light up a room while at the same time remain entirely enigmatic.  Very few human beings possess such a natural ability to both dominate and intimidate those around with simple body language.  Mike Lee Kanarek is able to utilize warmth and humor as he reduces everyone in a room into absolute hysterical laughter in seconds.  To truly understand the phenom of Mike Lee Kanarek we must go back in the sequence of events that occurred prior to his birth.

Emil Kanarek (Mike Lee Kanarek’s future adoped father) was a young teenager growing up in Austria during the dark era of the rise of Hitler. Part of his survival of the Holocaust is credited to a group of nuns who sheltered him in their convent so the Nazi’s would not capture him and sends him to Auschwitz.  At the end of this dark era, young Emil decided to journey to Israel and join the Haganah.  He later became an officer in the Palmach unit, the strike force unit of the Haganah, what may have literally been the first Israeli Special Forces Unit in a Partisan formation.  At the end of his stay at the convent, Emil asked the Mother Superior how he could ever repay them for the sanctuary they had provided in such dark times when all he had received from them was light during his entire stay.  The Mother Superior just answered, “That is a simple question to answer.  One day you must save a child like we have saved you and the circle will be closed.”  The era of the Holocaust was fading away and Eastern Europe was healing from the horrific genocide of the Jewish People.  The dark cloud migrated to another part of the world for the cloud of war always lurks upon humanity. 

"FLOWER CHILDREN"
The French abandoned Indochina after failing the attempt to conquer a Far East country for political and geographical gains.  After the French left, Indochina claims its name as Vietnam but the turmoil’s between the communist and non-communist leaders had clearly divided the country into North and South.  As the conflict between them was heating up, the United States found it necessary to intervene.  Some believe it was wrong, some say it was needed.  As always, regarding political issues, thousands of lives were changed forever.  A clear effect of life changing ripples occur each and every time a bomb is dropped upon a territory in a foreign nation.  On January 14^th, 1967, an estimated date, a child was born as a result of the American deployment to fight the North’s Viet Cong in South Vietnam.  His name was Le Van Hong.  Half American, half Vietnamese, the child was what they called a half-breed.  These children, an estimated 22,000 are considered the flower children of the Vietnam War.  Nicknamed the “Flower Children” because of the hippies in the United States protesting the war in Vietnam.

Kanarek remembered the words of the nun.  To repay the kind debt to them he decided to adopt a Flower Child of the Vietnam War.  The adoption process began and UNICEF, the organization in charge of extracting children from the war zone in South Vietnam, arranged the migration of Le Van Hong to Brussels, Belgium.  Four children were sent for adoption.  Two did not make it and perished on the voyage from the Far East to Europe.  The weakest one that survived was Le Van Hong.  After the child’s arrival in Belgium the UNICEF and Red Cross representatives informed Emil Kanarek and his wife Stella that they would not be able to take the child home.  Their main concern was that the child would not survive because of his malnourished condition.  UNICEF asked Emil Kanarek if he would prefer to wait for a healthier child to adopt in a shipment that would follow several weeks later.  He declined the offer and Le Van Hong at that point named Michel Kanarek was expedited to the nearest hospital.  He would stay under close supervision for the next four months not knowing if he would survive.  Cholera was only one of the medical concerns among others at the time.  However, it seems like divine powers wanted that child to make it.