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KISS cofounder Gene Simmons says he deliberately downplayed his Jewish upbringing in the beginning of his music career, because he felt it would be an obstacle to his success.
Simmons, whose given name is Chaim Witz, was born in Israel in 1949 and moved to Queens, New York, at age 8. His mother, Flóra Klein, who raised Gene as a single-parent, was a Holocaust survivor.
On a recent episode of the Howie Mandel Does Stuff, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was asked whether he'd ever encountered anti-Semitism in his career, as his bandmate Paul Stanley described his his 2014 memoir.
"A little bit. It's not like being Black or Hispanic, because sometimes you can hide behind, 'Oh, I'm Italian' or 'I'm Greek'; Jews have that ability," he replied, referring to his complexion. "But basically... I was born Chaim Witz, and I understood that that didn't work — I did. I realized for myself that in order to succeed, I've gotta be a chameleon of sorts. Basically, dress British, think Yiddish. Yeah, you're Jewish. That's fine. Shut the f--k up. Nobody's interested."
He added that for years he rarely talked about his family, so as not to highlight his Jewish roots.
Stanley claimed in his Face the Music: A Life Exposed autobiography that anti-Semitism was a factor in his and Simmons' longtime conflicts with fellow cofounders Peter Criss and Ace Frehley.
Both Criss and Frehley have vehemently denied those accusations, noting that each of them have Jewish family members.
Simmons "had no arguments" with Stanley's characterization of Criss and Frehley in 2014, according to the New York Post, though he has avoided commenting on the matter directly.