Statue of famous WWII kiss unveiled in Times Square to celebrate 65th anniversary of VJ-Day

A 26ft statue depicting a famous New York Times Square kiss that celebrated the end of World War II has been unveiled to mark the 65th anniversary of the U.S. victory over Japan.

The towering colour sculpture immortalises Alfred Eisenstaedt's black-and-white photograph of an unidentified sailor kissing nurse Edith Shain in 1945.

The image captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic photo marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.

On Saturday, Americans will gather for a 'kiss-in' at the base of the statue in the first national day of remembrance for the Second World War generation.
Around 6,000 buglers across the country will play the military funeral tune 'Taps' on the anniversary of V-J Day.

Shain died in June at age 91 before she could see her campaign for the commemoration completed.

She had become something of a celebrity because of the photo and wanted to leverage that fame into a worthy cause, said Warren Hegg, national supervisor for the 'Keep the Sprit of '45 Alive' campaign.

'It really became Edith's mission in life that there would be this national day, that every day someone thought about that day in August when a girl was kissed in Times Square, that people would think about it more deeply,' he added.
'She said we should have a day for all the ordinary men and women of that generation who did so many remarkable things and never were really recognized for that:

The identity of the nurse in Eisenstaedt's photograph was not known until the late 1970s when Shain wrote to the photographer saying that she was the woman in the picture taken on August 14 at a time when she had been working at Doctor's Hospital in New York City.

The identity of the sailor remains disputed and unresolved, although a man named Carl Muscarello has claimed it was him.
From then on the photograph also made its mark on Shain's life as the fame she garnered led to invites to war related events such a wreath layings, parades and other memorial events.

Shain, who died at her home in Los Angeles in June, leaves behind three sons, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Edith Shain - Nurse in famous WWII VJ Day photo, 1919-2010

The V-J Day picture of the white-clad Edith Shain by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.

The identity of the nurse in the photograph was not known until the late 1970s when Shain wrote to the photographer saying that she was the woman in the picture taken on August 14 at a time when she had been working at Doctor's Hospital in New York City.

The identity of the sailor remains disputed and unresolved.

From then on the photograph also made its mark on Shain's life as the fame she garnered led to invites to war related events such a wreath layings, parades and other memorial events.

"My mom was always willing take on new challenges and caring for the World War Two veterans energized her to take another chance to make a difference," her son Justin Decker said in a statement.

Shain, who died at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday, leaves behind three sons, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

May she rest in Peace.

Image - Alfred Eisenstaedt/Getty Images

Now you can own Schindler's list...for real!!!!

A private collector is putting up a very rare WWII artifact up for sale today:

An original copy of Oskar Schindler's list!

It is the only privately owned, genuine draft of Schindler's list of Jewish people he helped save from the Nazis and it can be yours for the price of $2.2 million.

The anonymous owner is having Gary Zimet sell the 13-page list of 801 names, who told the press that the list is "arguably the most important World War II document" available for purchase. Gary is selling the list through his Web site, MomentsInTime.com, on a "first come, first served" basis.

History buffs will sure want to get their hands on this one! Just hope they can afford it!

Image via Daily Mail / UK

Miep Gies, real life hero, protector of Anne and the Frank family in WWII. 1909-2010

She was one of the unsung heroes of this dark chapter of World War 2.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary not, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam in 1922 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.

Touched by Anne's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.

"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Anne wrote.

In her own book, "Anne Frank Remembered," Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health as she approached her 100th birthday.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

The good are always remembered. Thank You Miss Gies. Time to rest.

World War 2 ended 64 years ago today!

It started with a bang. It ended with a signature.

64 years ago today, Japanese officials signed the unconditional surrender of Japan on board the deck of the USS Missouri, while docked on Tokyo harbor.

So what started as an inavsion by Germany of Poland, ended with a signature halfway around the world, when Germany's last ally, Japan, gave up.

Of course after two nuclear blasts that killed 200,000 of it's citizens!

Faced with certain obliteration, Japan chose the wise path of peace.

Until now, WW2 is the most destructive war ever waged.

Let's make sure we keep it that way.

World War 2 started 70 years ago today.

70 years ago today, Germany launched a lighting attack, invading Poland, destroying everything and starting what was later called the Second World War.

Between 50 and 65 million people perished.

A moment of reflection, if you want.