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I was born in Israel, and my mother was Hungarian. I founded KISS and became its bassist. I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
Birth name
Chaim Witz
Born
1949-08-25, Izrael
Awards
Simmons was born as Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish refugees from Hungary. His mother, Florence Klein (1925–2018) was born in Jánd and survived internment in Nazi concentration camps. Simmons' father, Ferenc "Feri" Yehiel Witz (1925–2002), was a carpenter. Simmons spent his early childhood in Tirat Carmel and was raised in a practicing Jewish household.
Gene Simmons is an American musician. Also known by his stage persona "The Demon", he was the bassist and co-lead singer of the hard rock band Kiss, which he co-founded with Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss in the early 1970s until their retirement in 2023. Simmons was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of Kiss.
The Dohány Street synagogue is one of Budapest’s touristic highlights as it is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. The synagogue was built in 1859 in the Moorish style and it can seat 3000 people. Its huge size demonstrates the significance and the high economic and cultural standards of the Budapest Jewry of the age.
The temple was designed by Ludwig Förster (1797-1863), a German architect, professor of the Vienna Academy. The clerk of works was the architect Ignác Wechselmann (1828-1903) who later bequeathed his entire wealth to the Institute of the Blind. After Förster left, Frigyes Feszl, the famous architect of the Budapest Vigadó designed the temple’s inner sanctum. The official consecration of the synagogue took place on 6 September 1859. The interior of the synagogue is 1200 square metres, the towers are 44 metres high. There are 1497 seats for men downstairs and 1472 for women in the galleries, altogether the seating capacity of the flat-ceilinged inner space is nearly 3000 people.
Atomic physics
