Mijo Šajtoš was born in 1962 in Stari Jankovci. He grew up in a Rusyn family that had moved to the area of eastern Slavonia many centuries ago. At a very young age, his father was mobilised into the Croatian Home Guard and at the end of the Second World War he was part of the column that was taken to Bleiburg. He managed to survive and immediately upon liberation he was assigned to the army of the then Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He returned home only in 1948. Mijo Šajtoš is an agronomist by vocation and had a successful career during Yugoslavia. At the beginning of the war in the 1990s he was in Stari Jankovci, a place which he is particularly attached to. As the roads were blocked by barricades at the time, on one occasion he did not manage to pass and he stayed in Osijek. As the situation did not calm down, he rented an apartment in Osijek. His parents remained in Stari Jankovci; his father thought that since they were old people who had never done any harm to anyone, there would be no danger for them. Following the establishment of SAO Krajina, a small number of people from other ethnic groups, such as Rusyns, Croats and Hungarians, remained in the area. On one occasion, when guards belonging to the Krajina military - in a drunken state - maltreated the locals, an anti-personnel mine exploded, which left some of those who were present there injured, whilst some were killed. Mijo Šajtoš's father was amongst those killed. His mother left the area not long after the loss of her husband. Mijo Šajtoš returned to his home in November 1997. Since then he has been living in Stari Jankovci.