Greta Zimmer Friedman is the woman in the V-J Day photograph from Times Square, whose life John Kiriakou recounted in September 2025 after finding her listed on Find a Grave as having died on that date.
Why he raised her
Kiriakou uses the site to guide research for his cemetery books, deciding whom to include, and says he knows most of the people listed there as famous.[1] On the morning of 8 September 2025 he found one he did not: “It’s Greta Zimmer Freriedman and all it says is pop culture icon. Okay. Who the heck is Greta Zimmer Freriedman? And she’s buried here at Arlington Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.”[2]
Getting out of Austria
The entry told the earlier story first. She and her sisters “were among the last Jews to make it out of Austria uh when the Nazis were in the process of of ending um immigration.”[2] Kiriakou reads out the ages: twelve when she got the visa, fifteen when she finally settled with her family in New York City.[3]
14 August 1945
She had a job as a dental assistant, working for dentists on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. There were rumours the war would end that day, and since she was not far from Times Square she thought about walking over to see for herself whether they were true.[3]
“When when she got there, she was suddenly grabbed by a sailor… kissed exuberantly and just as suddenly left. She had no idea that an Associated Press photographer took a picture.”[4] The result became the iconic image of V-J Day, the front page of Life magazine, and — twenty years later, in Kiriakou’s account — what the magazine called the most iconic cover in its history.[5][6]
The nurse who was not a nurse
“She um she was misidentified for years as the VJ day nurse. She wasn’t a nurse. She was a dental assistant.”[6] The reason, agreed in the exchange, was the uniform: all white, with the hat.[6]
Proving it took the photographer. She brought a copy of the picture to Alfred Eisenstaedt and said, in Kiriakou’s telling, “I need for you to to acknowledge that this is me because nobody believes me when I say it was me.” He answered: “I recognize you. That was definitely you.”[6][7]
Her own verdict, quoted from a later interview: “It was kind of fun to be world famous even for a moment because it was totally accidental. Fame for just being there.”[7]
Arlington
She died on 8 September 2016 in Richmond, Virginia, aged 92, and was cremated, her ashes interred at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband Mischa Elliott Friedman.[7] Offered the suggestion that she should have been buried in a mausoleum in Times Square, Kiriakou allowed that she probably should have been — and then gave his reason for telling the story at all: “this is why I write these cemetery books. I mean, the stories that people have are just fascinating to me. I love it.”[8]