EXOD190 Judaism is so sensitive to preserve a person's dignity that the Torah goes out of its way to preserve even the dignity of sinners …. Even when sinners in the Torah had to be killed, they died, where possible, in a manner that would embarrass them least. According to one explanation in Rashi on [this] verse about leaving Egypt, only one fifth of the Jews left Egypt. The other four-fifths were sinners and perished during the plague of Darkness. It is believed that they died then so that they would not be unnecessarily embarrassed to die publicly, when the Egyptians would be aware of their deaths.