Richard Mahoney

She survived Auschwitz, raised a son alone in Queens, and never remarried. Her son would go on to become a rock star, but to him, she remained the strongest person he had ever known. Flora Klein was born in Hungary in 1925. She was a Jewish girl growing up in a country that would eventually try to destroy her people. In 1944, when the Nazis finally invaded Hungary after years of an uneasy alliance, Flora was 19 years old. For a time, Hungarian Jews had been spared the fate that had already overtaken Jewish communities elsewhere in Europe. Then that protection disappeared almost overnight. Flora and her family were rounded up, forced into cattle cars, and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the extermination camp where more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered within a matter of months. Flora survived. One of her brothers, Larry, survived as well. Everyone else in her family, including her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, was killed in the gas chambers. Flora was only 19 when the world she knew was destroyed. She would live another 74 years carrying the weight of what had happened. After liberation in 1945, Flora spent years in displaced persons camps, places that became a kind of limbo for survivors who had nowhere to return to. Eventually, she married and became pregnant. In 1949, in Haifa, Israel, she gave birth to a son named Chaim Witz. The marriage did not last. By 1958, Flora made the decision to leave for America. She went alone with her eight-year-old son. She spoke no English and had no money. All she had was her child and the same instinct to survive that had carried her through Auschwitz. They first settled in Washington Heights and later moved to Queens. Flora found work in New York's garment factories, working long hours for little money and stitching clothes by the piece. She never remarried. Her son later explained that she had been deeply affected by the losses she had endured and had become fiercely protective of the small family she had left. Flora rarely spoke about the camps. She didn't explain the nightmares, the silences, or why she saved every scrap of food and could never bring herself to throw things away. But she didn't have to explain everything. Her actions said enough. From his mother, her son learned two lessons that would stay with him for the rest of his life: nothing is impossible, and survival means working harder than everyone else. Those lessons helped build a rock star. Chaim Witz would eventually become Gene Simmons, the bass player, co-founder, and fire-breathing face of KISS. The makeup, the outrageous performances, and eventually the global empire all grew alongside the work ethic Flora had instilled in him. “Everything I am is because of my mother,” Gene has said. “She survived hell and still had the strength to raise me. Nothing I’ve done compares to what she survived.” Flora lived long enough to see her son become famous and wealthy, but she never wanted the spotlight for herself. She had survived Auschwitz by learning how to remain unseen, and even after finding safety, she stayed private, quiet, and humble. For decades, she refused to speak publicly about her past. But when she reached her 80s, she slowly began sharing her story. She gave testimony to Holocaust museums and allowed her experiences to be recorded for future generations. Gene said she did it because the survivors were growing older and dying, while Holocaust denial was becoming more common. She also wanted her grandchildren to understand where they came from. After remaining silent for nearly sixty years, Flora Klein finally spoke because she didn't want the memory of her generation to disappear with it. She died in December 2018 at the age of 93 in Los Angeles, surrounded by her family. Her obituary identified her as Gene Simmons's mother. But that was only one part of her story. Flora Klein was 19 when she entered Auschwitz. She should have died there. Instead, she survived.