Štefan Jangl

* 1955

  • „And when the roof was about to be built, the representatives came to me and started laughing. I say, what are you laughing at? Both Novosad and Jahoda: "So we don't know what to do anymore, but we'll probably write letters saying "Slovaks, help SLOVENGBATU build your house" - not one of them is there." I say: "What's the season?" - "They're all in the vineyards ." - "Well, call them." So they called the main representatives and I say: "So I'm telling you, if I don't see your people on that roof, I'll come here and tear it down for you again with those cranes and V3S. Leave!. ... I'll be there tomorrow." So I got there around eleven o'clock... - there were a hundred of them on that roof laying tiles. And I say: "I'll give you that you won't do anything!"“

  • „That was like you were going and the driver said that he was not going any further, that it might be mined. And I said: "Our boys passed through here. They are about half a kilometer from us. There are reproaches on the right and on the left, they passed." I got out of the car, "if you don't want to, follow me." So I went on foot with him, and I say: "If you don't believe your own people that they did it well, then in short, you have nothing to do between us. Because I trust them that they did it well, because they are trained for it." Well, they didn't admit a person who didn't know it. When a new deminer came, it was always handled by giving him a two-cent or five-cent piece, throwing it in the grass and saying "Look!" Or they took two euros or two dollars in change, he counted how much change he had, then he scattered it around the meadow and he says: "In the evening, when we arrive, you will bring me the money." Well, until the evening you saw a guy sitting in such a square in the grass and looking.“

  • „All the types of mines that were there were absolutely not in the list of those that I knew. That means, I saw them in the picture, I knew their models, but I didn't see them anywhere sharp. I needed to see the sharp ones and I needed to touch them. And for that I needed the Croatian engineers who came there, showed me - and I'll admit that at that time I reached into my own pocket, I just asked the commander to, in short - allow me to do it... And there you could buy cheap cognacs and beer. So I bought five cases of French cognac and a couple of cases of beer and said if it was possible for me to get this sharp material from them. Well, the 24th engineering battalion, to which these belonged, suddenly brought a full car, of everything.“

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    Sereď, 26.07.2022

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    duration: 03:53:07
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From a pyrotechnician to the commander of a UN peacekeeping mission, from a builder to the director of the Security Office of the Slovak Republic - The life and career of Štefan Jangl

Lt. Col. Štefan Jangl near the bridge built by Slovaks near the eastern Slovak village of Berak, 1997
Lt. Col. Štefan Jangl near the bridge built by Slovaks near the eastern Slovak village of Berak, 1997
photo: Witnesses archive

Štefan Jangl, born in 1955, became a builder already through high school, which later led him to the engineer army with a center in Sereď, where he held several commanding positions. He survived the revolutionary year 1989 and the division of Czechoslovakia as a student at the Military Academy in Vyškov, and in the years 1994 – 1998 he worked in the UN peacekeeping forces during the war in the former Yugoslavia. He started here as a chief pyrotechnician and finally became the fourth and last commander of the Slovak engineer battalion within the UN international peacekeeping mission, specifically in the UNTAES mission in Eastern Slavonia. After returning to Slovakia, he held several leading positions related to state defense and intelligence, in particular he was the director of the Security Office of the Slovak Republic in 2002 – 2008. From 2008 until his retirement in 2021, he was a teacher at the University of Žilina at the Faculty of Safety Engineering and deputy head of the Department of Safety Management.