Jan Berlfein Burns ’70 graduated from Oakwood School in 1970 as a member of its third graduating class. Her children are also Oakwood alumni: Zachary Burns ’06 and Katie Burns ’10. After raising her children, Jan began writing. She published March of the Living ~ Our Stories, a collection of Holocaust survivor stories. She is currently writing her memoir and has had personal essays published in Good Printed Things Anthology: If Memory Serves, The Keepthings, 47th Parallel, and the Jewish Journal, among others.
Jan and her husband, Rick, have been married for 40 years. They have three grandchildren: Nathan and Leila, the son and daughter of Zack and Julia, and Eli, the son of Katie and Doug.
Looking back, how did your time at Oakwood help shape your curiosity, values, or the way you approach your work today?
I transferred to Oakwood from public school in the middle of eighth grade. It was November of 1965, and I went from a strict environment of dress codes (girls had to wear dresses or skirts that went down to their knees) and big, formal classes to the relaxed setting of Oakwood, where we called our teachers by their first names and were free to roam barefoot through the Agoura Hills in shorts or blue jeans. With that freedom also came the opportunity to come up with our own ideas and see them through. In eighth grade, I wanted to go skiing, so I organized a trip to Mammoth for the eighth-grade girls. (At that time, seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls were segregated into separate classes). It was this freedom to come up with an idea and have those in your school environment say, “go with it, see where it leads,” that has been an asset throughout my life as I’ve embarked on many projects of my own creation.
When you graduated from Oakwood, did you have a clear path in mind?
When I graduated from Oakwood in 1970, I had very little idea about what I wanted to do in life, but there was no doubt that I’d be going to college. I started in the Modern Dance department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I studied modern dance with Bella Lewitsky at Oakwood, and she was a driving inspiration for me. It took me six years to get through college. I dropped out twice to work at a ski lodge in Utah, where I learned to cook, a profession that would serve me in another phase of life when I ran my own catering business. I finally graduated from UCLA with a degree in Ethnic Arts. Today, having researched and written a book preserving the wartime stories of Holocaust survivors, I can see a thread of interest that connects to my later college studies dealing with research, arts, and cultures.
What first sparked your interest in family history and connecting people to their past?
I often think that I was just born this way. I can trace my interest in family history back to a report I wrote in 6th grade about my grandfather and his family. My grandfather died before I was born, so I interviewed his sister to find out more about him and their parents. She gave me access to people I wouldn’t otherwise know about, but she knew them. It’s been a lifelong curiosity, one that has connected me to people across continents and opened doors to meeting people I never would otherwise have been fortunate enough to get to know.
Can you share a bit about your journey and what ultimately inspired you to create MARCH OF THE LIVING ~ OUR STORIES ~ A Collection from the Holocaust Survivors of the Los Angeles Delegation of BJE?
In the spring of 2010, my daughter, Katie Burns, while in her senior year at Oakwood, went on a trip to Poland and Israel called the March of the Living. She spent two weeks traveling with Holocaust survivors, learning of their stories and the stories of their families during World War II. As a result of the impact the trip had on Katie, I went on the same trip two years later and subsequently wrote a book telling the stories of these survivors. I felt that these students, having participated in the March of the Living and heard survivors’ stories firsthand, were entrusted with the responsibility of remembering and sharing those stories with future generations. Since 2016, Oakwood sixth graders have read excerpts from my book as part of their Holocaust studies curriculum, and I have brought survivors featured in the book to speak with the students. Watching those stories come to life in the classroom has been a full-circle gift for me.
What do you find most rewarding about the work you’re doing today?
Getting older has come with a lot of unanticipated freedom to explore new options. (My father called retirement DNO – Discovering New Options.) Over the last decade, I’ve dedicated time to writing and photography projects, was signed with a print modeling agency, and joined SAG to work as a background actor on TV and movies. All of these projects still leave time for me to babysit for my grandchildren, where I’ve taught them to bake challah and the most delicious chocolate chip cookies in town.
Through your work preserving personal histories and stories, what have you learned that you’d want current Oakwood students to know?
I used to worry that once the last Holocaust survivors were gone, the impact of hearing their stories firsthand would be lost. But I have come to understand that once we hear their stories, we become the custodians, the keepers of memory – when we then retell a story, we bring something of ourselves into the narrative, and that’s OK. That becomes part of the handing down. Telling our own stories is important too. The present will become the past one day, and these stories will tell our history.
Do you have a favorite Oakwood memory or moment that still makes you smile?
When the Oakwood School moved from Agoura to North Hollywood in 1967, the first addition to the campus was the two-story classroom building west of the original Spanish-style buildings. When the building was completed, a bunch of students got together to put on a grand opening performance from the balcony, for students and faculty watching from the parking lot below. A group of girls, myself included, danced the cancan across the length of the balcony, accompanied by the blasting sound of the Beatles singing their newly released song, All You Need Is Love.
