Life abroad can be very challenging, home is home
Stáhnout obrázek
Jana Trnková, née Handlová, was born on 26 April 1941 in Ústí nad Orlicí into a Czech medical family. Her father was MUDr. Jaroslav Handl and her mother was Leopolda Handlová, née Musilová. In 1946 her father was falsely accused and tried for collaboration with the Germans. Although he was innocent, he lost his post as head of the hospital and had difficulty finding work for the rest of his life. The family moved to her grandfather‘s villa in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. The communist regime wanted to nationalize it, but thanks to her mother they did not succeed. The witness graduated from the eleven-year school in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. However, the communists did not allow her to study at the medical faculty. Thanks to her father, she completed at least a two-year course in rehabilitation physical exercise in Prague. Here she met her future husband Marwan Sayeh, who was of Jordanian origin and was studying at the Czech Technical University. In 1963 she followed him to Damascus, Syria. There she witnessed the execution of Israeli agent Eli Cohen in 1965 and the so-called Six-Day War in 1967. Then in 1967 she returned permanently to Prague with her two children. Her first marriage ended in divorce and her ex-husband remained in Syria. In 1977 she married Jiří Trnka for the second time and in 1979 her third daughter Klára was born. Until her retirement she worked at the CTU in the library. In 2022 she was living with her eldest daughter in Roztoky near Prague.
