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Gene Simmons and KISS: Channeling One’s Inner Superhero

By Russ Maheras / www.hoodedutilitarian.com

In 1958, an estranged Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor named Flóra “Florence” Klein brought her eight-year-old son, Chaim Witz, to New York City from Israel to seek out a new and better life. Chaim Witz’s name was soon Americanized to Gene Klein, and would eventually become the infinitely more famous double-alter ego Gene Simmons.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

After a year in an Orthodox Jewish school, the young Klein made his transition to America complete by entering the New York City public school system. Unable to speak or write English at first, Klein quickly turned to the new and fascinating world of American popular culture to learn his adopted language. While other kids were outside playing baseball or kick-the-can, Klein immersed himself in almost all of the mass entertainment arts: movies, television, science fiction, cartoons, pulps, and especially comic books. Reflecting later about those early years, he said once he saw Superman and Batman, “he was hooked.”

Then, in 1964, at the age of 14, he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, and a new world opened up for him: pop music. As he said decades later in his book Kiss and Make-Up, “My first thoughts about pop music were born that night, and they were simple thoughts: If I go and start a band, maybe the girls will scream for me.”

Klein’s first band was Lynx, announced incorrectly as The Missing Links – the name which ended up sticking – and it consisted of Klein, Danny Haber and Seth Dogramajian. Like Klein, both band-mates were obsessed with comic books. Klein elaborated about their four-color passion: “Seth and I used to publish amateur fanzines about comic books and science fiction. We would write articles, review movies, and talk about characters from television shows. His fanzine was called Exile; mine was called Cosmos. But after the Beatles, it became clear to us that, as much as we loved science fiction, it wasn’t going to get us where we wanted to go with the girls.”

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Note from Paul Stanley:

My Mother’s Fleeing The Nazi Takeover Of Germany With Her Parents Would Make A Movie. I Pray For More Than SIX MILLION Who Couldn’t.

By HANS-WILHELM SAURE UND SVEN KUSCHEL / www.bild.de/

After the interview with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley (68, real name Stanley Bert Eisen) asks the reporters to come over to him in the hotel lobby.

“I heard what you found out for Gene. Can you help me? My late mother lived in Berlin and fled the Nazis as a child. I know so little.”

BILD am Sonntag also investigated this case and found out that the famous star’s Jewish family barely managed to escape being arrested by the Nazis at the end of 1935. The search leads to the Jewish Cemetery Berlin Weissensee.

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100% of the profit generated from the purchase of this KISS Face Mask shall be donated* to the Global Relief Fund For Live Music Crews - Live Nation Entertainment.#CrewNation

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You can now get KISS x Marvel at Urban Outfitters!

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Great video from Collector Guys! How about you, KISS ARMY - what's your top 10 KISS items in your collection?

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