Greta Friedman, the woman kissed by a sailor in the iconic picture taken in NY city’s Times Square after the Second World War ended in 1945, has died, a media report said.
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Ms. Friedman, who fled Austria during the war at 15, died Thursday at a hospital in Richmond, Va., from complications of old age, said her son, Joshua Friedman.
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.
The photograph, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, is one of the most iconic images of the 20th century Greta Friedman, centre, and her grandkids Caroline, left, and Michael, right.
The photograph was published a week later in Life magazine among many photographs of celebrations around the United States that were presented in a twelve-page section titled “Victory Celebrations”.
Friedman entered Times Square in the afternoon to investigate and found herself grabbed and kissed by sailor George Mendonsa out of overjoy by the end of WWII.
Although the picture captures the pair in a tight embrace, they did not actually know each other. She told her interviewer that he’d been in Time Square with a date, Rita Petry, who later became his wife and who watched the whole thing unfold.
Greta Friedman is said to be the woman in the black-and-white image of a woman in a nurse’s outfit and a USA sailor kissing in Times Square. “It wasnt a romantic event”.
When the news of Japan’s unconditional surrender was announced on August 14, 1945 people spontaneously rushed into the streets of NY to celebrate.
They say it depicted sexual assault because Friedman never consented to being kissed, but Friedman has publicly said that she never made a complaint against Mendonza and maintained a friendship with him for years after.
The famous image shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt and is appropriately called “V-J Day in Times Square”. “I’m not sure about the kiss”, Ms. Friedman said. It was years before Mendonsa and Friedman were confirmed to be the couple.
Friedman was born in 1924 in Australia and traveled to American with two younger sisters in 1938. Her parents, who stayed behind, died in the Holocaust. Mendonsa said that in some photos of the scene, Petry could be seen smiling in the background.
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Friedman’s claim is perhaps the most convincing, however, since it is backed up by the Naval Institute Press’s 2012 book The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II.
