Trávová started secondary school in 1936, but the Nuremberg race laws prevented her from graduating. The same laws forced her to leave the Sokol athletic association. She was also a member of the Czechoslovak Scouts. She eventually did a requalifying course in physical education, but from 1939 until the end of the Second World War she was interned at Terezín concentration camp, where she worked in a woodworking shop. She also attended music and dance performance, and after liberation she took a three-month secondary school equivalency course so she could study history and physical education at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education. After graduating in 1950, she began to teach physical education at the university’s medical and education faculties, and in 1953 she began teaching at the Academy of Performing Arts. She later joined the Department of Physical Education at DAMU, where she worked until 1988.