Gene Simmons

Simmons was born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish refugees from Hungary. His mother, Flóra Kovács (later Florence Klein, then Florence Lubowski) (1925–2018), was born in Jánd in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. She survived internment in Nazi concentration camps from November 1944 to her liberation from the Mauthausen camp in Austria on May 5, 1945. She and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust. Witz's father, Ferenc "Feri" Yehiel Witz (1925–2002), was a carpenter whom Klein married in 1946; the couple moved to Mandatory Palestine the following year. Witz spent his early childhood in Tirat Carmel and was raised in a practicing Jewish household. He has said that his family was "dirt poor", scraping by on rationed bread and milk. At the age of seven, he began to pick wild fruit and sell it on roadsides together with a friend. At age eight, after his parents’ divorce, Witz and his mother immigrated to the United States, settling in Queens, New York City. His father remained in Israel, where he had another son and three daughters. In the United States, Witz changed his name to Gene Klein, adopting his mother's maiden name. When he was nine, he briefly attended a Jewish religious school, Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, before transferring to a public school. He graduated from Newtown High School. …

Simmons resides in Los Angeles with his wife Shannon Tweed, a Canadian actress and former Playboy Playmate. Although they began dating in 1983, they did not marry until 28 years later. Simmons often joked that he and Tweed were "happily unmarried" for over 20 years. He also often paraphrased Groucho Marx, saying "Marriage is an institution, and I don't want to live in an institution". Simmons and Tweed wed on October 1, 2011, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They have two children: Nick (born January 22, 1989) and Sophie (born July 7, 1992). He formerly had live-in relationships with Cher and Diana Ross, revealing that he fell in love with Ross while dating Cher. Simmons has boasted many times about having sexual intercourse with thousands of women: in 2010, he claimed the tally stood at 5,000 and that he had a Polaroid picture of each liaison, including the hotel key where it took place. A 2012 episode of Gene Simmons Family Jewels captures Tweed discovering a key for the lockboxes containing the photos and confronting Simmons about it, where he eventually expresses remorse and agrees to dispose of them. The episode ends with Tweed setting the collection on fire. Simmons is multilingual, and is able to speak Hungarian, German, English, Hebrew, and some Japanese. …