In parallel with his work for the Parks Department he worked as an official of the Social Democratic Party. After the bloody streets fights of February 1934, until 1938 Afritsch was an active participant in the welfare activities of the . Tasks included the distribution of donations received from Great Britain and the United States to working class Viennese families who had fallen into penury through loss of family income caused by the death, injury or detention of the family wage earner. In 1938, a few months after the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany, it was Josef Afritsch who applied trades union funds to obtain a ticket on Lufthansa's inaugural scheduled flight from Vienna to Berlin for Bruno Kreisky, the future Federal Chancellor, who both as a SPÖ activist and as a Jew had repeatedly fallen foul of the pro-Nazi government since 1934. From Berlin Kreisky was able to fly on to Denmark and then to Sweden where he spent the next eight years in political exile.