The woman who was iconically photographed being kissed by a sailor in Times Square near the end of World War II died this week in Virginia, her family confirmed.
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The famous kiss was a spontaneous moment after news broke of Japan’s surrender on August 14, 1945, ending the conflict.
Both of her parents died in the Holocaust, according to Lawrence Verria, co-author of The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind The Photo That Ended World War II.
Greta Zimmer Friedman, then a 21-year-old dental assistant, was kissed by a sailor on August 14, 1945, during a celebration as news of the Japanese surrender reached home.
Greta Zimmer Friedman, whose kiss with a sailor on V-J Day was captured in an iconic photo, has died at the age of 92.
As she entered Times Squaret, 22-year-old sailor George Mendonsa grabbed her and kissed her.
The famous photograph was taken in the streets of Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The photo became one of the most reproduced images of the VJ Day celebrations in the world.
Joshua Friedman said his mother never felt like she had done anything to deserve a spot in American history.
She married doctor Mischa Friedman in 1956. “You come back from the Pacific, and finally, the war ends”, Mendonsa told CBS News in 2012, about the exhilaration the crowds felt.
The photo has served as a symbol of the exuberance Americans felt at the end of World War II, capturing what many saw as a charmingly ideal portrait of the U.S. at a portentous moment of history.
Two years later, in 2014, TIME ran a story on the iconic picture and noted that “many people view the photo as little more than the documentation of a very public sexual assault, and not something to be celebrated”.
“I did not see him approaching, and before I know it I was in this vice grip”, Ms Friedman said in 2012. So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her.
She died in Virginia after contracting pneumonia, her son Joshua told the New York Daily News (NYDN). “It wasn’t a romantic event”.
He said they met again in the 1980s, and from that point his mother and the man she will be forever linked with would exchange Christmas cards.
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Born Greta Zimmer in Austria in 1924, she and her sisters fled Hitler and the Nazis in 1938, moving to the US.
