Edmond Kaiser; Champion of Humanitarian Causes

Edmond Kaiser, 86, a humanitarian activist who founded several international organizations that help children. Born to a Jewish family in Paris in 1914, Kaiser worked with the French resistance during World War II and was condemned to death by the Nazis for his actions. He survived and moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1947. Twelve years later, he formed the organization Terre des Hommes based in Lausanne, which works worldwide to help children facing poverty, illness and war. Kaiser was a close friend of Bernard Kouchner, the current United Nations administrator in Kosovo who founded Doctors without Borders, the recipient of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Kouchner, at the time a French government minister, named Kaiser the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1990. But Kaiser declined the honor, commenting: “Sitting in the middle of dead or suffering Biafran children, out with the children of Vietnam whose skin has been peeled away by napalm, it would be as if I found it normal to be honored for their martyrdom.” Kaiser also wrote several books on music and poetry. On Saturday of an illness while traveling in India.