AETF reporter
Katarzyna Rozwadowska

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Grand Master Pablo Trajtenberg in Taekwon-do from 1968. Elected for the ITF Board of Directors as a Senior Vice-President first time in 2003 in Warsaw, Poland. Chosen again for the same position in 2007 in Quebec, Canada for the next four years. 11th of March, 2011, Grand Master Trajtenberg has been elected as a President of International Taekwon-do Federation for the period 2011-2015 at the Congress during the World Championships in Wellington, New Zealand. I have had the greatest pleasure to talk with our new President. The interview as a result of our conversation you will find below.

• Sir, could we start from the beginning of your Taekwon-do career? Can you tell us about your way from a white belt to becoming the President of ITF?
  I think there is only one word – passion. First day I saw Taekwon-Do I knew - ‘I’m going to be a black belt’. When I saw General Choi I knew – ‘I want to learn from him’. I wanted to see him, talk to him and be as close as possible. Maybe Taekwon-Do was so good for my life, a build that I can never pay for. There was a passion to organize my country, and then I tried to involve Gen. Choi, because I saw that many things have to be changed to build Taekwon-Do bigger and better. I was close with Gen. Choi because at that time we didn’t have any possibility to decide, so we were not for the organization but for trying to be better in the art! Then, when Gen. Choi passed away GM Tran became a president. I was still close. I wasn’t looking for the position. I was only looking for to be a part of the future of Taekwon-Do. From that moment I was very comfortable making things. Then we had a terrible disaster of earthquake in Haiti. I thought that maybe God put me on this position and from there I only had to continue my mission.

• Do you remember first time you met General Choi?
  Yes. I was a yellow belt. He came to our gym in Argentina to see Taekwon-Do class. It was 1968. We were in line, he was going to take photo with all of us one by one. I asked my friend to take a picture but unfortunately you can’t see my face there.

• What are the main plans and vision of the ITF for the future? Which direction in the future Taekwond-Do should develop? Do you already have short and long action plan for the ITF?
  We are still at the beginning of this period so I cannot concrete exactly what would be short and long action plane. I can better tell you about long one. I always had the vision that Taekwon-Do is not only a sport. We are in a crucial moment when the society needs the martial arts like we do more than ever. The principals go at the same time with the actions. That means: normally people want only the sport part like championships or things that we can show. But my point of view is – this has to be an element we can use to educate and to modify the behavior of the people. Our instructors have the intuition but they seem not professional, so we need to make a very professional system for children, adults about how we are going to deliver our philosophy for getting pace inside and make a pacific society. Not only because we have the intuition and that is good for me then I can teach you. It has to be something different. The society is now going to accept. But schools or universities cannot accept something that is not professional. We need to have programmes and professionals working to prepare our system, there have to be people behind us. And we have lots of these people, so we need to discover it and make all these things work.

• What kind of benefits has ITF as an organization?
  What kind of advantages comparing to the others has ITF that should bring people to our organization? I think it’s the vision. If we talk for example about Korean vision, their vision is how to make politics through Taekwon-do. So, for them it is important to be politicians and to be in Olympics, because Olympics could attract a lot of people and offer connections with governments. But we do not care about this. Our main reason to exist is because our people, because children come to the gym. So, we have different goals, and with these different goals we are closer to the society but still we care about competition but not as the fundamental goal.

• What are the most important problems concerning ITF that needs to be addressed?
  I think we don’t have big problems now. The problem that could appear is the relation of the people. This is the point that we have to take care about – how we are going to make communication between us. If we have good communication, good relations and we understand each other, then we can resolve everything what can happen for us now and in the future. I can tell you, that now for example the problem we are going to face is to get the application to Sport Accord. They could give us the application maybe, maybe. But if not – we have people, we have the instructors. Sooner or later they have to recognize us, because nobody can say that something doesn’t exists if something exists. Sooner or later we are going to arrive to our point.

• What kind of relationships did you have with the previous President Grand Master Trân Triêu Quân? How do you evaluate his achievements?
  I liked him very, very much and I can tell he was my friend from the beginning, from the early days. I invited him to my country to teach and I only give this place to people that I think that they are very good people, unless I have the capacity. So, this relation was great and at the beginning it was sharing our passion, because we both were under General Choi, nobody can decide anything. We were going to different countries to teach and to put our technique. We both had the same vision that Taekwon-Do is not only for fighting (sport), but it is to teach people to get better life and to achieve the happiness. When he became the President I was on his side. We got some feeling that we were one voice. I didn’t want to be in the front line. He often received my advice and sometimes not, but we were continuing in a harmony. Our relation was so nice, so good. So, I miss him very much.

• Could you say a little bit about yourself?
  I got lots of energy when I was young. I was the kind of person that when people were looking at me then I was very quiet, but when a teacher or somebody turned around then I could do anything. I think it was because I had too much energy that I couldn’t handle. Then my life gave me an opportunity to be in Taekwon-do. I am sure if I didn’t find Taekwon-do I would have lots of trouble in my normal life. So, I can say that Taekwon-do saved my life. In two or three first months in Taekwon-do I normalized. So, that gave me a chance to get the passion. I was making electronics, I’m a technician in electronics, because I have never thought that I can live from Taekwon-do. When I began an engineer and started work I didn’t like it much. I was suffering. At the same time I started teaching Taekwon-do. I was so glad when I was teaching and I enjoyed that very much. I got more and more people and then I started to think ‘what am I doing studying engineering? I don’t want to be an engineer’. I needed only one more year to finish the five years university, but I said ‘I’m going to quit’. After that I had a big problem in my family. They asked ‘why are you going to quit if you have only one year left?’. But I said: ‘No, because I will lose one year in my life. I don’t want to lose one more year’ and I took the decision to open a gym. My children (I have three children) were very funny. Once a teacher asked ‘What is the job of your father?’. The answer was: ‘He has no job. He makes Taekwon-do and takes coffee’. So that is a very good example to finish. The happiness is how you can choose what things you are going to do in your life to get happiness. And this is my life. I am married with Liliana. We got married when I was 26 years old. I can tell you that we enjoy life very much, also with our children. Always comes to the same point - you might have travel, you can have problems but the thing is the communication. So, the reason why our family is very happy is because we are very kind between each other.

• What is the philosophy of your life?
  The happiness is to make what you like. For me it is Taekwon-do and enjoying my family. I do not have other things. To be honest I really like to read. I am a good reader and one day I would like also to write something. I think about two things. One would be nice about the experience of leadership in Taekwon-do. The other one would be some stories. I have a very good fantasy. I think that to have a vision you need to develop your imagination. If you are going to plan something you need to have a vision in advance, you have to be before the others.

• What are your private plans for the near future?
  I live in a city now and it is a little bit too crowded for me. I had to be there because of my children. Now my children are 21, 29 and 18 so they are old enough, and I can retire a little bit and would like to live in more quiet place. This is my special goal. Also, the ITF is looking for people who are calm and quiet to have a reflection how to act. I love all about the Technical Committee as well, because that always was my passion. I cannot do full work but I would like to go maybe two or three times a year to be part of, because this is the thing that I will never quit. Also, I have received email from my student ‘Congratulations (…) but don’t forget us’. So, I will come back to my normal class because this is my real passion.

• What would you like to say to all Taekwon-Do practitioners?
  Continue doing your passion but if we want to arrive goals the most important thing is to be united. The normality of human being is to fight because we try to follow our instincts of protection, but we have to understand that between us we have the harmony and we don’t need to protect anything. So, we can be relaxed between us and that will be the way to achieve things. All the problems in organizations is fights and we have to avoid this. My sign is – always when you say ‘hello’ the fist is like that - the strongly clenched fist. When you have your hand, fist open it is very weak. When you close your fist then you become strong. So, this is my sign for the people: be strong, be united.

We would like to congratulate and wish much success in performing Grand Master Trajtenberg’s position as the ITF President and lead International Taekwon-do Federation to the democratic, well organized and successful organization, with co-operation and help from all ITF country members. We wish a happiness and all the best in his professional and personal life.