In 1919 at the age of nineteen, Josef Zdenko Dworak, whose father Wenzel Dworak already managed a transport company, founded his own transport company J. Z. Dworak junior with offices in Burggasse in Vienna's 7th district. In the 1930s until 1935 he also managed the Türkenschanzpark restaurant in the 18th district not far from his home address at Gentzgasse 162, where the depot and garage were also located. He joined the NSDAP on 20 March 1933, before the Party was banned (Vienna-Türkenschanze section, membership number 1,530.002), which he assumed after the annexation in 1938 was the reason that his nomination as a court-sworn assessor was turned down. In 1938 the personnel office of the Vienna Gau considered that as an Old Comrade ("Alter Kämpfer"), Dworak had served the NSDAP "movement" and should be given preferential treatment. Apart from his membership of the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps), he also joined the Reichsverkehrsgruppe Spedition und Lagerei (Reich Transport and Warehouse Group) in Berlin, apparently also working there as an unpaid functionary.

After the war Josef Zdenko Dworak was charged with a number of offences. He was accused of having misappropriated from 1943 to 1945 a stock of sixty-six bottles of expensive wine and fifty crates of other restaurant materials worth over 150,000 schillings. Regarding his Nazi past, he also admitted to the Landesgericht für Strafsachen (provincial court for criminal matters) that he had paid 19,000 schillings after the war to obtain his Gau file so as to get rid of politically incriminating evidence. The case before the Vienna Volksgericht under §§ 8, 10/3 of the Prohibition Act was closed in 1948 in accordance with § 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO).