Sailor pictured kissing Jewish nurse in iconic war photo dies aged 95
George Mendonsa was spotted kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman by Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt at the end of the Second World War
The ecstatic sailor photographed kissing a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of the Second World War has died aged 95.
George Mendonsa was spotted kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a Jewish dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, on August 14 1945.
Known as VJ Day, it was the day Japan surrendered to the United States.
People spilled into the New York City streets to celebrate the news.
Mr Mendonsa planted a kiss on Ms Friedman, whom he had never met – and the moment was captured by Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
The photo was first published in Life magazine and became one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century.
Titled V-J Day In Times Square, the photo is known to most as The Kiss.
Several people later claimed to be the kissing couple and it was years before the subjects were confirmed as Mendonsa and Friedman.
Mr Mendonsa served on a destroyer during the war and was on leave when the end of the war was announced.
When he was honoured at the Rhode Island State House in 2015, Mr Mendonsa spoke about the kiss.
He said Ms Friedman reminded him of nurses on a hospital ship that he saw care for wounded sailors.
“I saw what those nurses did that day and now back in Times Square the war ends, a few drinks, so I grabbed the nurse,” Mr Mendonsa said, according to WPRI-TV.
Ms Friedman said in a 2005 interview with the Veterans History Project that it was not her choice to be kissed.
“The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed,” she told the Library of Congress.
She added: “It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn’t a romantic event.”
Mr Mendonsa died two days before his 96th birthday, after suffering a fall at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years, his daughter Sharon Molleur told The Providence Journal.
Ms Friedman fled Austria during the war as a 15-year-old girl.
She died in 2016 at the age of 92 at a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from complications of old age.
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