Edmond Kaiser

Trained as an office worker, Edmond Kaiser went to Germany in 1932-1933 for a linguistic stay. Back in France, he was sent to the front (1940). A member of the Resistance (1943-1945), he was accused of treason during the Occupation and imprisoned for a month before being cleared in 1947.

The accidental death in 1941 of his two-year-old son, his experience of injustice, and his devotion to murdered innocence led him to action. He moved to Lausanne in 1948 and created the association of friends and then companions of Emmaus in Lausanne in 1957-58. In 1960 he founded Terre des hommes. In 1980, he created Sentinelles, a foundation designed to take care of people in major distress.

Sentinelles' walking axis

The sense of the sacred, the sense of urgency, the search and discovery of people left behind.

Their help and individual accompaniment, one by one, from the immediate emergency to the long term life, and the vigilant fight against what crushes them.

THE VISION OF EDMOND KAISER

To rescue starving, handicapped or sick children, martyred, captives, slaves, rejected

To save girls and boys from infanticide, to rescue young women who are persecuted, rejected or victims of sexual mutilation and forced early marriage, to help abandoned elderly people.

While some of the programs launched under Edmond Kaiser’s leadership have been completed, many are still ongoing.

Bibliographies

  • Mémorial d’une poupée – 1951, Lange prize of the Academy in 1952
  • La marche aux enfants – 1979, P.-M. Favre
  • Interviews with Edmond Kaiser, Founder of Terre des hommes, co-founder of Sentinelles – 2000, Christophe Gallaz and Edmond Kaiser, Éditions Favre
  • La Grâce du Monde – 2015, Éditions de l’Aire
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