This week: the sailor in the famous Kiss photo, an actor known for playing Hitler and a Labour MP and campaigner

THE former sailor George Mendonsa, who has died aged 95, was the man who was captured in a famous photograph kissing a woman in Times Square at the end of the Second World War. Mr Mendonsa was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a 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, and 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.

The photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt was first published in Life magazine and became one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. It is called V-J Day In Times Square, but is known to most as The Kiss.

Several people later claimed to be the kissing couple. It was years before Mr Mendonsa and Ms Friedman were confirmed to be the couple.

Mr Mendonsa served on a destroyer during the war and was on leave when the end of the war was announced. He has said Ms Friedman reminded him of nurses on a hospital ship that he saw care for wounded sailors.

Mr Mendonsa died two days before his 96th birthday. 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.

THE Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, who has died aged 77, played Adolf Hitler cooped up in his Berlin bunker in Downfall and an angel in Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire.

Ganz, a prominent figure in the German-language theatre world, moved into films in the 1970s, appearing in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu and Wenders' The American Friend among others.

In one of his more recent appearances, he starred as Sigmund Freud in The Tobacconist, released in 2018.

Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller said Ganz was one of the greats of the screen and stage.

He said: "The death of Bruno Ganz is a great loss for the German-speaking theatre and film world."

THE long-standing Labour MP Paul Flynn, who has died aged 84, represented Newport West for 32 years. He held several shadow cabinet posts during his parliamentary career, including a brief stint as shadow secretary of state for Wales in 2016, but had not been active in the Commons in recent months.

Mr Flynn was a strong advocate for the medicinal use of cannabis, and in 2017 urged people to break the law by using cannabis at the Houses of Parliament.

Speaking during a debate on drugs policy, Mr Flynn said: "I would call on people, and I know we're not supposed to do this as members, to break the law. To come here and use cannabis here and see what happens and challenge the Government, the authorities, to arrest them and take them in.

"That's the only way we can get through the common mind of the Government, which is set in concrete and the whole laws are evidence free and prejudice rich - let's see them do that."

Later the same year, he also called for a second referendum on Brexit. Speaking in the Commons he asked: "Isn't it right that three years after the referendum, when we're thinking of taking this step, we allow the public to have a second opinion on this in the knowledge that second thoughts are always superior to first thoughts?"

He announced in October that he intended to stand down as an MP due to health reasons and said that he had loved every minute of his time in Westminster. He said at the time: "It's been a great, wonderful, rich experience. I lasted 31 years."