Franz Ferdinand Olah

Franz Olah is born in Vienna, the son of a craftsman and a k.u.k. non-commissioned officer. He attended elementary school in Vienna, but moved to Budapest in 1919, where he attended a few classes at a grammar school, but dropped out and began an apprenticeship as a piano maker in 1924, having moved back to Vienna with his mother. In the same year, he joined the youth section of the Free Trade Union and became an official there a year later.

In 1926, he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth and from 1929 was a representative of the Social Democratic Party in Vienna-Hernals. He was unemployed during the Great Depression and devoted himself to social work. He is home director of the Youth in Need and Youth at Work campaigns.

He serves political prison sentences in 1933, 1935 and 1937 for distributing socialist writings. During these years, he was a member of the resistance group Revolutionary Socialists of Austria (RSÖ) and worked underground for the Free Trade Unions. In 1938, the staunch opponent of National Socialism negotiated until the very end to join forces with the government of Federal Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg in order to preserve Austria's independence.

Franz Olah, however, had to witness the downfall of a free and independent Austria on March 12, 1938, when the German Wehrmacht invaded. He was arrested by the Gestapo that very night and deported on April 2, 1938 on the so-called 'Prominent Transport' to the Dachau concentration camp.

After Hitler's invasion of Poland, the SS needed the Dachau concentration camp, which is why it had to be evacuated. Franz Olah was therefore transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 27, 1939 and transferred back to the Dachau concentration camp from there on March 2, 1940. On March 30, 1944, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp and the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp. He managed to escape from there on April 21, 1945.

On July 1, 1945, after the liberation of Austria, he returned to Vienna and immediately became involved in the newly founded construction and woodworkers' union. From July 6, 1945, he was Central Secretary of the Bau-Holz trade union. From 1945 to 1948 and from 1969 to 1970, he was a member of the Vienna state parliament and municipal council. From 1949 to 1957, he was Chairman of the Construction and Woodworkers' Union. From 1947, he was also Chairman of the Vienna-Hernals SPÖ, National Councillor and 2nd President of the National Council.

In October and November 1950, Franz Olah played a leading role in the suppression of the attempted coup by the Communists in Austria.

In 1959, Franz Olah became President of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) and in 1963 Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Austria.

In 1964, it became known that Franz Olah had embezzled trade union funds to finance Franz Dichand's Kronenzeitung newspaper. He then resigned as Minister of the Interior and was expelled from the SPÖ and ÖGB.

After being expelled from the SPÖ, Franz Olah founded the Democratic Progressive Party (DFP) in 1965. The DFP received just over 3 percent of the vote in the 1966 National Council elections and therefore did not enter the National Council.