I forgive the Nazis. My DNA was marked by the fear and hatred generated in Germany. Parts of my DNA were destroyed by those people. A book was written espousing why my father and grandmother and grandfather and cousins ought to be viewed as subhuman. People gained and maintain power and wealth from the insistence by the Nazis that to exterminate a peoples was plausible. But then where does that hate take me. I can run and hide, I can say the past has no tangible purpose and what exists is what is. But my DNA holds memory. And it is of so much greater ease to nurture the DNA stamped victim.

But what truth, what memory does the other strand hold. My mitochondrial strands hold the death of millions of Africans. It’s survived from the wealth those bodies generated. My people were able to live their lives because others were…