A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who died Sunday at 78, Herb Strauss had a habit of turning adversity into something sweeter. A successful advertising executive and longtime cantor, he founded the Lauri Strauss Leukemia Foundation after his daughter died at 27 from the disease. Through a series of annual concerts at Carnegie Hall with performances by stars including Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow, and musicians including Skitch Henderson and his New York Pops Orchestra, Strauss raised some $3.5 million that his foundation distributed as seed grants. The foundation claims that its grants have been responsible for attracting more than $130 million in additional research funding in the fight against leukemia.

Strauss was born in Germany and immigrated with his parents to Cleveland, where his father was a rabbi. Strauss sang in his family’s synagogue from age 6. A scholarship student at Princeton, he wrote and produced shows as a member of the college’s Triangle Club. He later performed in regional theaters, but eventually took a job as a trainee at NBC-TV in New York. In 1957, he became a unit manager for “Treasure Hunt,” a game show in which the winner of a quiz went on a treasure hunt and eventually selected a prize chest guarded by the show’s “Pirate Girl.”

Still avid to perform, Strauss in 1957 released the album “Folk Music for People Who Hate Folk Music,” which reportedly sold well but did not lead to a recording career. He later released a second record, “Songs and Stories for the Jewish Holidays.” He was also for several decades the cantor of the Port Washington Jewish Center.

Strauss next embarked on a career in television advertising, with positions at Kenyon & Eckhardt and Doyle Dane Bernbach, where he eventually became a vice president. Among his clients were Volkswagen, IBM, and Burlington, for whom he did an award-winning commercial that included the slogan, “Burlington Socks Don’t Drop.” In 1977, he formed his own advertising company, Herb Strauss Productions. He was executive producer of “Louis Rukeyser’s Business Journal” in the early 1980s.

Strauss married his college sweetheart, Evelyn, and the couple had two daughters, Julie and Lauri, who was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 1984. His wife and daughter survive him.

In 1989, Strauss asked a family friend, the folk singer Judy Collins, to sing at a leukemia benefit he organized at Alice Tully Hall. It became an annual event and in 1992 moved permanently to Carnegie Hall. The show’s bill inevitably was crowded with top talent whom Strauss had met over the years and stayed in touch with.

“Herb kept everyone,” the chairman of the Lauri Strauss Leukemia Foundation, Charlotte Rosenblatt, said. “And there was nobody he wouldn’t ask to be in the show.” He once observed Skitch Henderson exiting a taxi and propositioned the startled band-leader on the spot. Henderson became the show’s regular conductor.

Although he was ill, Strauss had made plans to attend this year’s fund raising concert on Monday. This year’s special honorees were the songwriting duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, with Marvin Hamlisch conducting the New York Pops orchestra. Strauss died the day before the show.