Through July 4, The Post, in conjunction with the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, is featuring US citizens explaining what the American dream means to them in 2026 — including Gene Simmons, bassist and founding member of KISS.

My mother was 14 years of age when our entire family, including my mother, were in concentration camps. Nazi Germany. And my mother saw her whole family wiped out.

I was born in Israel. When I was eight and a half years of age, we came to America. People were big! And everybody had automobiles. Everybody had their own refrigerators stocked with food, different brands.

Then my mom took me to my first supermarket, and it was a city of food. You hear about the land of plenty — but I couldn’t ever imagine anything like that.

 And to think I couldn’t speak a word of English.

By the time I was in sixth grade … I started my first gigs delivering newspapers. And I noticed that the guy that had the next route newspaper route a few blocks over was kind of lazy. So I said, “I’ll do your newspaper route. I’ll give you half of what you normally would do.” And that way I could make one and a half times as much as I normally would. I didn’t mind working. I like money and the way to get to the money is by hard work.

And I remember the look on my mother’s face when I’d come in at the end of the week and put the money on the table. “That’s my little man,” she would say,

[When KISS was forming, I thought,] don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t just try to form a band, have a day gig. By the time I was 23, I was able to save up $23,000, which in those days was a lot of money. And that funded the beginning of the band. And the band took off. Within a year and a half of founding, KISS was playing stadiums.

America embraced me as if I were here for generations.

The American dream, you can’t stop it. The light that lights this darkness — that was invented here. You want to fly through the air? That was invented here. Almost anything you can imagine was invented here to make people’s lives better.

The American Dream Video Project showcases real stories that illuminate pathways to opportunity. Featured at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD), this series is part of the Center’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. MCAAD is Washington, DC’s newest cultural institution, offering interactive exhibits and stories about achieving the American Dream. For more information, visit mcaad.org.