During the Austrofascist period, between 1934 and 1938, Kovarik was twice arrested on account of her political activities. By 1938 she was aged 19, and employed as a post office official, assigned to work for the post office savings bank ("Postparkasse"). 1938 was the year of the "Anschluss". Many welcomed the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany, but those on the political left did not. She joined a Young Communist group led by . During the war the "Soldatenrat" specialised in writing and sending letters to members of the army, calling upon them to desert. Other members of the group alongside Kovarik were and Elfriede Hartmann who were both, like Rabofsky himself, executed before 1945. In her apartment in Vienna-Favoriten she organised the paper work for the "soldier work". She was in addition responsible for communications with resistance group members in Graz, in the south of the country.