Elie Wiesel lights a candle in the Hall of Remembrance at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2012. Photo: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press ‘Suffering, in Jewish tradition, confers no privileges. It all depends on what one makes of that suffering.” So wrote Elie Wiesel in one of the most compelling of his nearly 50 books, “Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits & Legends” (1976). The ethic embodied in this passage mirrors Wiesel’s own stance toward the shattering he endured in Hitler’s death camps. Afterward, he took it upon himself to never allow the world to forget. “Night,” his searing 1958...