Gene Simmons Meets WWII Veteran Who Helped Liberate His Mother from Nazi Camp

In an emotional and historic moment in Washington, Gene Simmons iconic frontman of the rock band KISS met 100-year-old World War II veteran Harold “Hal” Urban, a man who may have helped save his mother’s life during the Holocaust. The meeting connected two lives separated by generations but united by a moment of liberation that altered the course of history.

Urban was among the American soldiers who liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1945. The camp, where Simmons’ mother, Flora Klein, was held as a teenage prisoner, was one of the Nazis’ most brutal facilities. Though Urban cannot definitively recall meeting Klein amidst the chaos and horror, both were at the camp when American forces arrived an event that ultimately led to Klein’s survival and, decades later, the birth of her son in a free Israel.

Urban’s memories remain raw even after a century of life. He described the gruesome scenes: skeletal survivors, the reek of death, and mass graves dug by soldiers to bury 500 corpses within 24 hours. “The trauma of the camps was worse than anything we saw in battle,” Urban shared. Even after the war, the mental toll lingered. “The psychologist said when you raise a family, the nightmares subside. And when your children leave home, they return. And that’s what happened.”

Flora Klein was just 14 years old when she was imprisoned. After the war, she immigrated to Israel, where she gave birth to Chaim Witz later known to the world as Gene Simmons. Like many Holocaust survivors, Klein rarely spoke of the horrors she endured. For Simmons, the meeting with Urban brought new clarity to the fragility of his own story.

“She was in the camp at age 14,” Simmons said. “She hardly talked about it at all. Now I know how close I came to losing everything.”

The encounter was more than a personal milestone it was a tribute to the enduring bonds between the Jewish people and the liberators who helped restore their freedom. It honored the unsung heroes of the past and underscored the miracle of Jewish survival and rebirth.

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