Greta Zimmer Friedman, the Jewish refugee whose Times Square kiss from a sailor on the day World War II ended became an iconic photo, has died.
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Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped a sailor in a dark uniform kissing Friedman with his arms around her and her white-clad body bent backwards as revellers in New York’s Times Square celebrated the victory over Japan.
Friedman was on a break from work on August 14, 1945 when she was swept up in an embrace by a sailor she didn’t know – a kiss that would come to symbolize America’s jubilation at the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II.
Friedman, who fled Austria during the war as a 15-year-old, died Thursday at a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from complications of old age, her son, Joshua Friedman, said.
Friedman, who was 21 then, was not a nurse, but a dental assistant.
As for Zimmer Friedman, the Daily News reports she would go on to study costuming at the New School’s Dramatic Workshop before marrying doctor Mischa Mitty Friedman in 1956.
Famous photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took the photo for Life magazine, but it’s subjects were unknown for decades because he didn’t get their names. She was in one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, one depicting the county’s joy as Americans learned of the Japanese surrender.
Some have suggested the story smacks of sexual assault, but Joshua Friedman said his mother would respectfully disagree.
She will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to her late husband, Dr. Misha Friedman.
In 2005 she told the Veterans History Project: “Suddenly, I was grabbed by a sailor”.
“The excitement of the war bein’ over, plus I had a few drinks”, Mendonsa said. Over the years, several women came out claiming they were the ones in the photograph.
Friedman didn’t know of it until the 1960s, when she saw it in a book of Eisenstaedt’s pictures. But the identities of the two people were a mystery.
Her son, Joseph, earlier this month told The New York Daily News that his mother was sympathetic to those views, but also to Mendonsa, with whom she was reunited for a CBS news item in 2012.
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Though their passionate embrace might indicate otherwise, Friedman and Mendonsa did not know each other and never had a romantic relationship.
