[1] József Fischer was born into a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family in Tiszaújhely, Austria-Hungary (present-day Nove Selo, Ukraine) on 15 December 1887.

[4] After taking his bar exam, he worked as a lawyer clerk at the law firm of Vilmos Vázsonyi in Budapest.

Following the end of World War I and dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918–1920, Fischer remained in Transylvania, which became part of the Kingdom of Romania.

Against the position taken by pro-UER Transylvanians such as Miksa Klein, they advised in favor of communitarianism, rejecting assimilation into the Romanian mainstream.

They coalesced into a "parliamentary club" with Mayer Ebner and the Bessarabian Zionist Michel Landau, calling themselves segments of a "country-wide Jewish party".

During the 1932 Romanian general election campaign, in February, Landau, alongside Tivadar and József Fischer, were unexpectedly barred by the government authorities from speaking at an electoral meeting in Sighet; their attempt to address the Maramureș Jews from inside Talmud Tora Synagogue was also broken up by the Romanian Police.

Following the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, his fellow Zionists offered József Fischer to escape to Romania, but he refused.

They were instead transported by the Nazis to Bergen-Belsen (where he temporarily chaired a "committee" of exempted Jews), and subsequently allowed to leave for Switzerland in late June 1944.