They tried to ban WWII kiss photo (learn amazing back-story)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Assistant Under Secretary for Health Operations RimaAnn Nelson sent an agency memo asking all Veteran Department employees to remove all photos from medical buildings of the famous Navy sailor kissing a woman on V-J Day in 1945.

Nelson said it violated the department’s “no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault”. Under backlash the memo has since been reversed.

The censor attempt is just another way our history is being erased or re-written.

And what extremists cannot rewrite they just vandalize as seen below.   vandals wrote “#MEtoo” to imply sexual assault.

 

This is sad because the story behind the famous photograph is extraordinary beyond belief.

The photographer, Alfred Eisentaedt was born in Germany. As a photographer he took photos of both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. Alfred once took a photo of Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s Chancellor and top mastermind of Nazi propaganda. Goebbels was upset at the moment of the picture taking once he realized that Alfred was Jewish.   Albert’s parents fled to America and he later followed.

The couple in the photo by best scientific evidence has been identified as George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman.   Part of the analysis of identifying the sailor came down to 3-D face mapping and matching marks on his arm.   Watch this video to learn more.

The woman in the photo, Greta Zimmerman Friedman was born in Austria and fled to the United States.

Her Jewish parents were not as fortunate as they were captured by the Nazis and died in the Holocaust.

 

On the day of the photograph, Greta was a dental assistant who left work and joined the celebrations.

 

George Mendonsa was a Navy sailor who left a movie early with his girlfriend once the news of the war’s end was announced.

His girlfriend, Rita Petry, is actually seen behind him in the original photo that appeared in Life Magazine as seen below.

George was extremely grateful for nurses.  As a ship pilot during the Pacific War he came to the rescue of an aircraft carrier that was sunk.  He steered 100 rescued to a hospital vessel.  Seeing the sailors being helped by the nurses forever deeply touched him.   When he saw (what he thought was a war nurse) he had to thank and celebrate with her.  As the photographer, Alfred, noted everyone was kissing everyone at the moment — young and old.  Greta would add to what the photographer said by saying “it wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act”.  It was like when someone just announces the birth of a baby and you briskly hug and kiss everyone around you — this is how America felt.

And yes, Mendonsa’s girlfriend, Rita Petry, didn’t mind either — she married him!

Greta’s granddaughter, Carolien Brandin, further explains the big kiss and why it wasn’t sexual violence, “She [Greta] was proud to be an American citizen. She was a refugee from Austria and so the end of the war marked more to her than for everyday people.  ‘She never felt it was something inappropriate. It’s interesting they tried to reframe historical events in today’s values.’I have a picture in my house that my grandma signed and even George Mendonsa signed it. My grandma stayed in contact with George and she did parades on V-J day with him.’She never said it was anything she felt was uncomfortable’. ”

She further mentioned that she had to defend her grandmother in college,  ” ‘At college I had a women and gender studies teacher who showed that image and said: ‘This is a sexual assault.”I put my hand up and said that’s actually my grandma, she didn’t view it that way. The teacher disagreed with me.”

Just as Greta’s granddaughter had to fight Leftist professors from rewriting history and defaming her mother’s name,  so you — the reader — need to do the same.

The people that are politicizing history are doing so to empower their modern political movement and to disempower everyday people like you and me.  We do not need politically motivated gatekeepers to tell us what parts of our jointly held memories are approved or disproved by their political litmus test.

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