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Gene Simmons (born Chaim Weitz Hebrew: חיים ויץ‎; August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-American rock bassist, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and actor. Known as "The Demon", he is the bassist/co-vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s. Kiss has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. Chaim Witz (later Gene Simmons) was born at the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel in 1949. Mother and child emigrated to Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City when he was eight years old. His mother Flóra "Florence" Klein (formerly Kovács) was born in Jánd, Hungary. The... MORE

Gene Simmons (born Chaim Weitz Hebrew: חיים ויץ‎; August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-American rock bassist, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and actor. Known as "The Demon", he is the bassist/co-vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s. Kiss has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. Chaim Witz (later Gene Simmons) was born at the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel in 1949. Mother and child emigrated to Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City when he was eight years old. His mother Flóra "Florence" Klein (formerly Kovács) was born in Jánd, Hungary. The German name Klein (means: small) is sometimes used informally in Hungarian as Kiss, that gave the rock band's name. Florence and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust. Simmons' father, Feri Witz, also Hungarian-born, remained in Israel, where he had one other son and three daughters. Simmons says the family was "dirt poor," scraping by on bread and milk. In the United States, Simmons changed his name to Eugene Klein (later Gene Klein), adopting his mother's maiden name. He attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as a child, from 7 am to LESS