Chapter One

The magic is done. The Wayback Machine has deposited us along the banks of the Mediterranean Sea, thousands of miles from the New York origins of KISS. Chaim Witz, later to become Gene Simmons, details his heritage. "My parents were born in Jand, Hungary, a small town on the Danube River. During World War II, my mother was in a concentration camp, and her mother, her brother, her grandmother, and most of her family were killed. After the war, my parents met in a way station, got married, and snuck into Israel. They didn't return to Hungary because Hungary, like a lot of countries, wasn't interested in taking back the Jews that were still alive. I was born August 25, 1949, in the port city of Haifa."

"When I was very young, we moved to the village of Carmel, where the Scrolls of Carmel were discovered. As a small child, I remember playing on a hill that had these little caves. There was always lots of stuff around, but I never gave it much thought. It turns out that some of the oldest specimens of human beings were discovered there. Everybody in America has the impression of Israel being the land of kibbutzes, but it's not. Israel is the most modern country in the Middle East. It's very Americanized. I remember in 1955 and '56, watching Jeff Chandler movies where he played Cochise. My first exposure to American culture was seeing the Indians in those movies. The language sounded very alien, like gibberish, and the Indians looked like they were from another planet."

In Israel, Gene was "a marbles champ. Marbles was the national pastime, and I was it. I was pretty good at tops, but marbles is where I killed