Archives

The year 2020 is the 40th anniversary of the creation of Sentinelles by Edmond Kaiser. We wanted to mark this date by making our historical archives public.

At the initiative of Hoda Dubray, co-founder of Sentinelles, under the responsibility of Amélia Jeandrevin and Martin Bovay and the direction of Gilbert Coutaz and then Delphine Friedmann, many volunteers have carried out a titanic task for three years. With method, they gathered, analyzed, restructured and described thousands of documents testifying to the causes defended and the journeys of children and families encountered at the heart of their suffering. Reading so many distresses, they felt the burden, a burden lightened however by the flight of young women towards their autonomy, by Edmond Kaiser’s caustic humor, by his pen, sometimes tender, sometimes acerbic.

The inventory of Sentinelles’ historical archives is now available online at www.davel.vd.ch (reference PP 1111) and the archives can be consulted on request at the Vaud Cantonal Archives, chemin de la Mouline 32, in Chavannes-près-Renens.

We thank the following people for their voluntary work

•        Heidi Bedwani
•        Alexia Buttet
•        Julia Cave
•        Norma Merck
•        Marie Porchet
•        Christiane Renaud
•        Florence Schwendener
•        Ivan Thomi.

And the staff of the Archives cantonales Vaudoises, for their precious collaboration

•        Claude Badino
•        Jean-Marc Falciola
•        Carole Laubscher
•        Bredan Testuz.