


In the late 1960s, he changed his name to Gene Simmons to honor legendary rockabilly performer Jumpin' Gene Simmons. After arriving in the U.S., young Chaim Witz took the name Eugene Klein (later Gene Klein), Klein being his mother's maiden name. His Hungarian-born father, Feri Witz, did not accompany them to the U.S. Florence and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only two members of her family to survive the Holocaust. Simmons was born in Tirat Carmel, Haifa, Israel in 1949, and immigrated to Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City at the age of eight, with his mother Flóra Klein - a Jewish Hungarian immigrant (who was born in Jánd, a village in Hungary ).

5.1.1 Selected television guest appearances.
