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Photos, even selfies, have the power to heal

Photographs that establish an "I-Thou" relationship between the photographer and the subject can have immense healing power.

It is easy to deride “selfies” and the scads of photos that people today often compulsively take and share with their cellphones. But let’s not write them all off as meaningless. As I’ve seen in my parents’ remarkable journey from the doomed Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, and in my psychiatry practice, photographs have immense power to heal.

My parents grew up in Lodz, which then was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. On Feb. 8, 1940, the Nazis . My father, Abraham Bursztajn, was condemned to be part of a sanitation crew called the

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