Henry Landsberger, who has died aged 90, arrived in England as a 12-year-old second world war refugee from Germany with the Kindertransport, and in 1940 was fostered by my father, Robin Huws Jones, in Lincoln. Henry’s parents later escaped to Chile.

He was born in Dresden, the grandson of the last chief rabbi of the Dresden synagogue, burned down by the Nazis on Kristallnacht. In the 1990s Henry was instrumental in the building of the New Synagogue, and then supported the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche (destroyed in the allied bombing of Dresden) in a typical act of reconciliation and bridge-building.

As a teenager in Lincoln, despite his interrupted years of schooling and the need to adapt to a new language, Henry did well in his studies. He then served as a Bevin boy in the coalmines. He gained a place at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1948 with a first-class degree. After spending a year with his parents in Chile, he won a scholarship to Cornell University in New York state to study for a PhD in industrial and labour relations.

He met his future wife, Betty Hatch, in one of his first classes there; they married in 1951. Henry remained at Cornell until 1968, when he moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His academic work focused on workers’ rights and on welfare, and included studies of Latin American peasant movements and research on differences in healthcare delivery in Europe and the US.

Henry’s early experiences led him to devote much of his life to working for reconciliation between communities. He travelled to Germany to speak to schoolchildren about his own childhood, and was a member of the US Holocaust Speakers Bureau. He visited the Middle East as part of an interfaith delegation, and enjoyed Israeli and Palestinian friendships. Henry was a man of great energy and sociability. He was also very funny, with a wealth of puns and anecdotes.

Throughout my father’s life, Henry remained devoted to him, as he was to Henry, and the ties between our families remain close. Henry and Betty’s last years were spent enjoying the life of a retirement community in Chapel Hill, where Betty died in 2012.

Henry is survived by their three children, Margaret, Sam and Ruth, and five grandchildren.