In Chapter 4 of Night, what makes Elie and the other prisoners cry over one particular hanging?

In the
fourth chapter of his memoir of life in the German concentration camps, ,
bydescribes a heartbreaking scene in which a beautiful young boy, a
pipel, is hanged along with two men for the crime of sabotage. The
Gestapo, the Nazis secret police organization, accused these three individuals, including the
boy, of sabotaging an electrical plant that provided power to the prison camp in which they were
being held. Their death sentence was carried out in front of the assembled inmates.

Earlier in the chapter, Wiesel had emphasized the degree to which he and the other
prisoners had grown hardened to the sight of hangings, every prisoner having been forced to
endure repeated beatings and humiliations. The hanging of the young pipel,
however, affects these prisoners very deeply. Ordinarily, the Kapos, Jewish prisoners who were
forced €“ and sometimes cajoled -- by their German captors to serve as disciplinarians and
supervisors of the other prisoners, were notoriously cruel. In this case, though, the Kapo in
question was known for his kindness, and his young assistant, the pipel,
was similarly different from others in his position. This one, as Wiesel described him,
had a delicate and beautiful face €“ an incredible sight in this camp.
Besides his physical beauty, the boy was, in the manner of his boss, kind and sensitive. When
the kapo and the boy were arrested and tortured, neither broke under the pressure and implicated
any other prisoner. When the time came to hang the alleged conspirators, however, the sight of
this young boy among those to be executed caused a very different reaction on the part of these
otherwise-emotionally-hardened inmates. Even the German SS officers carrying out the execution
sensed something different, as described by Wiesel: The SS seemed more preoccupied,
more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small
matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child.

The hanging of this very special child, in marked contrast to all the other hangings
the prisoners observed, marked a new level of brutality even for the Nazis. For the first time,
Wiesel notes, the other prisoners wept at the sight of the boys hanging €“ an execution
all-the-more cruel for the fact that the childs light weight prevented a quick death at the end
of the rope, causing him to linger and die a slower, more painful death. It was this hanging,
more than any other, that prompted other inmates to doubt the presence of God. As Wiesel goes on
to describe the days events, That night, the soup tasted of
corpses.