Maži’s second mother - The rescue of Tomaž Zajc in Ljubljana
Tomaž Zajc was born in Ljubljana on 2 May 1939. His mother, Regina Zajc, came from Ljubljana’s Jewish Steinberg family; her father, Viljem (Wilhelm) Steinberg, was co-owner and later director of the glue factory in Zelena jama. Tomaž’s father, Ladislav Zajc, was a bank clerk. The Steinberg family had converted to Christianity as early as 1921, but during the Nazi persecution this offered them no protection: after the German occupation of Ljubljana, Jewish ancestry became a matter of life and death.
In 1941, Elizabeta Savica Rožanc, born in Ljubljana in 1920, began working for the Zajc family as Tomaž’s nanny and governess. She had barely entered adulthood; the war had interrupted her plans to study and forced her to find work. A close bond developed between the child, whom the family called Maži, and his young nanny—a bond that, at the decisive moment, would become a lifeline.
Following the capitulation of Italy and the German occupation of Ljubljana, the arrests of Jews intensified. Tomaž’s grandparents, Viljem and Lili Steinberg, were arrested in late 1943 or early 1944 and deported to concentration camps. Neither survived. On 12 September 1944, the Gestapo came for the Zajc family as well, at their home at 8 Resljeva Street. By chance, Savica had spent that night with the family, although she normally stayed with them only during the day.
When the pounding on the front door began, Savica grabbed five-year-old Tomaž and ran onto the kitchen balcony. Holding the child in her arms, she climbed across to the balcony of the neighbouring apartment, where acquaintances of the Zajc family took them in. Once those arrested had been taken away and the building had fallen quiet, Savica and Tomaž set out in the darkness towards Tivoli. Savica’s parents, Miha and Ema Rožanc, lived there as municipal tenants on the ground floor of Tivoli Castle.
The Rožanc family did not hesitate. They took Tomaž in and devised the story that would save his life: to neighbours and acquaintances, they presented him as Savica’s illegitimate child, whose existence she had kept secret. And so Tomaž Zajc became Tomaž Rožanc. The neighbours probably understood that the story was untrue, but they remained silent. In doing so, they too became part of a quiet network of protection, in which silence could mean the difference between life and death.
Tomaž lived with the Rožanc family until the end of the war. He remembered the warmth of Savica, of “Father” Miha and Ema, the neighbours in Tivoli, his childhood chores, and the coat Savica made for him from a military blanket, sewing onto it gold buttons from an officer’s uniform. In a world that had taken away his family, his home and his sense of safety, Savica gave him another childhood: hidden and dangerous, yet filled with love.
The happiest day of his life came on 17 July 1945. Tomaž was sitting by the kitchen window in Tivoli Castle when he saw an exhausted, emaciated woman walking towards the building. The moment he recognised her, he ran outside. It was his mother, Regina, returning from internment and calling him by his family nickname: “Maži! Maži!” Tomaž’s father, Ladislav, had returned from Dachau a few weeks earlier; his aunt Lidija and uncle Ludvik also returned.
Savica Rožanc remained part of Tomaž’s life after the war and until her death. His parents regarded her as their own adopted daughter. Soon after the war, she married Istvan Horvath and lived with him in Vojvodina before emigrating to the United States in 1958. She died there in 2009.
Tomaž Zajc became a professor of geography and an expert in tourism. He married, had two sons and later grandchildren. Whenever he spoke of Savica, he put it simply:
“She was my second mother.”
Tomaž Zajc died in Ljubljana on 13 December 2023 and is buried at Žale Cemetery in Ljubljana.
(Based on an account by Irena Šumi)
