V.V. (15) Esther uses the Holocaust as metaphor

[jbor]

       So they talked metaphysics while the afternoon waned. Neither 
    felt he was defending or trying to prove anything important. It
    was like playing one-up at a party, or Botticelli. [...]
       "How can you say there's a soul there? How can you tell when the
    soul enters the flesh? Or whether you even have a soul?"
       "It's murdering your own child is what it is."
       "Child, schmild. A complex protein molecule, is all."
       "I guess on the rare occasions you bathe you wouldn't mind using
    Nazi soap made from one of those six million Jews."
       "All right--" he was mad-- "show me the difference."
       After that it ceased being logical and phony and became emotional
    and phony. (354.1-14)

The way Esther uses the Holocaust as a rhetorical powerplay against Slab is
certainly covered by those two "phonies" the narrator chips in with. She has
been cast as a Jewish hypocrite -- overtly and throughout the text -- and
her anti-abortion stance here is also suspect imo. But Pynchon is obviously
contemptuous of those who would use the Holocaust simply as a ploy in order
to win a petty argument, and this is a theme which figures in, and propels,
_GR_ also.

best