A wave of arrests in the German Reich known as ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ or ‘Aktion Arbeitszwang Reich’ affected a few Sinti and Roma in April 1938 and hundreds of them, mostly young males, in June 1938. Those arrested in April were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp by the Gestapo and those arrested in June to Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen by the criminal police. The basis for the arrests by the criminal police was the ‘Preventive Fight against Crime’ decree of 14 December 1937, which initiated the first racially motivated removal of a large group of Sinti and Roma to concentration camps; one in eight male adults was affected.
Badged as ‘work-shy’ or ‘asocials’ with the black triangle, Sinti and Roma were subjected to particular harassment in the concentration camps. It is not known how many survived internment. Those who were liberated from the concentration camps after seven years had to fight for decades to be recognised as victims of National Socialism and for compensation.
Previous History
Raids followed by committal to workhouses or care homes were part of police measures against Sinti and Roma even before 1933.1Cf. Constantine, Sinti and Roma, 33–47, 78–98. The National Socialist regime radicalised such practices by implementing measures against ever broader sections of the population, using terrorist methods and actions designed to be highly visible to the wider public. This created a social climate in which not only the people who were under attack as political opponents of the regime, but also certain racially or socially stigmatised groups were at the mercy of the increasingly arbitrary actions of the state authorities.2Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 60 f.
One of the first nationwide police measures was the ‘beggars roundup’ ordered for the week of 18 to 23 September 1933, during which tens of thousands were arrested. The action was mainly aimed at homeless people, but also targeted itinerant traders and showmen who were suspected of offering inferior goods or services. Most of the people arrested were released after a warning; some were sent to workhouses, some to improvised camps or to one of the early concentration camps.3Ayaß, “Asoziale“ im Nationalsozialismus, 19–32; Hörath, “Asoziale“ und “Berufsverbrecher“, 143–199. On the fight against social outsiders since 1933, see also Wachsmann, KL. The History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, 140–148. As far as is known, only very few Sinti and Roma were interned as part of this roundup.4Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 61, cites two examples.
The same applies to the arrest of 2,000 men ordered on 9 March 1937, who were regarded by the criminal police as ‘professional or habitual criminals’ and were identifiable in the concentration camps by green triangles on their clothing.5See Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 97. 122 people were arrested in Cologne in this context; a surviving Sinto reported that his brother had been arrested in the course of this raid.
Gestapo Action
In April 1938, the Gestapo also carried out a roundup aimed at a ‘one-off, comprehensive and surprising seizure’ of ‘workshys’ who were to be sent to Buchenwald.6The Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, B. No. S-PP (II E) – 7677/37 g, 26 January 1938, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 46 f. With this action, ordered by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) on 26 January 1938, the Gestapo put pressure on the staff of the criminal police and the labour and welfare offices and National Socialist Welfare Organisation involved in the selection of the group of people to be arrested: All those considered unproductive were to be subjected to stricter controls and to be sanctioned if they failed to join the workforce. The arrests, initially announced for the beginning of March, took place between 21 and 30 April 1938. Around 1,950 men were taken into ‘protective custody’ [Schutzhaft] and arrived at Buchenwald by 12 June 1938, where they were registered as ‘Arbeitsscheue Reich’.7According to Schmid, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’“, 34, who refers to Buchenwald’s reports on inmate numbers. Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, states that “about 1,500“ people were arrested. Among them were 25 Jews. How many Sinti and Roma were among the inmates has not been researched; their identification is made more difficult by the fact that there was no ‘Gypsy’ inmate category in Buchenwald at the time—unlike in Sachsenhausen. It is certain that two Sinti were arrested in Würzburg, one of whom was released because he was able to prove that he had a job. In the case of the second man, it is not clear whether he was actually sent to Buchenwald.8Schmid, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’“, 34, and Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 105 f. Roma are also said to have been arrested in neighbouring Austria as part of this Gestapo action.9Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 115, refers to a chronicle of the Wulkaprodersdorf gendarmerie from May 1938, preserved in the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, 16.532.
The Decree of 1 June 1938
However, it was the criminal police that was to lead the fight against all those considered unproductive and non-conformist. Starting on 14 December 1937, the criminal police was able to order ‘preventive custody’ in concentration camps at its own discretion and without consulting the courts—similar to the Gestapo’s protective custody. In addition to ‘professional and habitual criminals’, men stigmatised as ‘asocials’ were particularly targeted. Since, as Himmler put it in his instruction of January 1938, ‘the smooth and comprehensive realisation of the planned measures will take some time’,10The Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, B. No. S-PP (II E) – 7677/37 g, 26 January 1938, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 46. the Gestapo pressed ahead with the arrests in April.
The Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) had used the time to prepare its own operation. This was closely linked to a re-purposing of the concentration camps, in which the inmates’ labour was now to be exploited for the SS’s (Schutzstaffel) nascent business enterprises. At the same time, pressure was to be exerted on the population to adapt in order to increase their productivity for the rearmament of Germany. The introductory part of the relevant express order of 1 June 1938 stated: ‘The strict implementation of the Four-Year Plan requires the use of all those capable of working and does not allow for asocial people to evade work and thus sabotage the Four-Year Plan.’11Reich Criminal Police Office, Tgb. No. RKPA 6001/295.38, 1 June 1938, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei, in Ibid., 81vr. Himmler was thus also responding to a demand by the Reich Minister of Economics, Hermann Göring (1893–1946), to take stronger action against the itinerant traders and freelance musicians in view of the labour shortage.12Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 115. On the labour market policy significance of the arrests, see Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 287–289.
At the same time, the RKPA initiated a national campaign to demonstrate its new determination to take preventive, targeted and ruthless action against all those who could be considered ‘asocials’ as defined by the decree of December 1937. In the week from 13 to 18 June 1938, ‘at least 200 male persons fit for work (asocials)’ were to be taken into preventive custody in each criminal police district. The following groups of people were named as ‘to be considered above all’: ‘(a) vagrants who are currently roaming from place to place without work; (b) beggars, even if they have a fixed abode; (c) Gypsies and persons travelling around in Gypsy fashion, if they have shown no desire for regular work or have committed offences; (d) pimps who have been involved in relevant criminal proceedings [….] or persons who are strongly suspected of pimping; (e) persons who have numerous previous convictions for resisting arrest, assault, brawling, trespassing, etc. and have thereby shown that they are not willing to engage in regular work or have a criminal record. etc. and have thereby shown that they do not want to fit into the order of the Volksgemeinschaft.’13Reich Criminal Police Office, Tgb. No. RKPA 6001/295.38, 1 June 1938, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 81. In the decree, the RKPA also ordered that all Jewish men who had served a prison sentence of more than one month be arrested that week. The heads of the Regional Criminal Police Headquarters (KPLSt) were responsible for the implementation. According to the decree, all those arrested were to be sent to Buchenwald.14Ibid, 81r.
Arrests in June 1938
During the wave of arrests, also known as the ‘June Action’, the Reich’s 15 Regional Criminal Police Headquarters had considerable leeway in selecting their victims. They drew on the documents available in the police files and gave the subordinate offices a largely free hand. In most cases, decisions on who was to be arrested were made on the spot and sometimes in consultation with the authorities, especially the labour and welfare offices. The group of people who were actually deported to the concentration camps shows that the arrests were based on a variety of socio-racist motives: Homeless people or those accused of begging were among them, as were welfare recipients and the unemployed, as well as men perceived by the criminal police offices as troublemakers or known as petty criminals whom they were unable to apprehend by legal means.15Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 279–292. The arrests of Jewish men, like those of the Sinti and Roma, were based on racial policy considerations: for the first time, members of groups stigmatised as ‘racial aliens’ were sent to concentration camps in large numbers.
In total, far more arrests were made than the 200 targeted per KPLSt, so that admissions were made not only to Buchenwald, but also to Dachau and Sachsenhausen. Between 14 and 19 June 1938, a total of 2,378 men were registered as ‘work-shy’ in Buchenwald, 6,224 were admitted to Sachsenhausen between 17 and 25 June, and 895 men with the abbreviation ‘AZR’ (Arbeitszwang Reich) were recorded in Dachau between 24 June and 11 July. As the Jewish men were listed in the camp statistics both as ‘Arbeitsscheue’ or AZR inmates and as ‘Jews’, their proportion can be determined more precisely: Of the total of 9,497 prisoners sent to the three concentration camps as part of the June Action, 2,300 were Jewish men.16All previous figures according to Schmidt, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’“, 36.
The number of Sinti and Roma deported to Dachau in June 1938 is estimated at 300, 232 of whom came from the Austrian Burgenland;17Jost, “Dachau“. in Sachsenhausen 448 ‘Gypsies’ were registered at the end of June 1938.18Schmid, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’”, 39. No exact figures are available for Buchenwald, as Sinti and Roma were not initially labelled separately and there has been little empirical research. In spring 1939, there were just over one hundred Sinti and Roma in the camp;19Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, 74. this can be assumed to be the minimum number of Sinti and Roma committed in June 1938, and may increase as new research results become available.
Even if the number of around 620 Sinti and Roma—excluding the Austrian Roma—may not seem particularly high at first glance, the campaign of arrests affected almost every family in Germany. According to an overview compiled after May 1940, the persecuting authorities assumed at the time that there were around 19,000 Sinti and Roma living in the German Reich (excluding Austria) before the arrests of June 1938 and the deportation of May 1940.20Bundesarchiv Berlin, Zsg. 142/22-1, “Übersicht über die in Deutschland lebenden Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge“ (no date) [after May 1940]. Half of these were probably children and adolescents,21This is the result of statistical analyses of the 29,000 Sinti and Roma deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. so that out of 9,500 adults, 4,750 men were among the potential target group. This means that around one in eight adult male members of the Romani community (620 out of 4,750) was sent to a concentration camp. It should be noted that there were regional differences, meaning that families in certain localities could be more seriously affected. For example, the social welfare authorities in Hamburg reported that the majority of male ‘Gypsies’ there had been arrested in the course of the June Action.22Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 115.
Racial Motives for the Arrests
In the days from 13 to 16 June 1938, police officers carried out raids to arrest Sinti and Roma throughout the Reich.23For an overview, see Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 107-109, and Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 115 f. They prioritised detention camps, which they surrounded—as in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Magdeburg—in order to select men on the spot or to take all men into police custody before deciding whether or not they should be interned. Caravan sites, municipal accommodation and known residential addresses of Sinti and Roma were also combed. Arrests were also made at workplaces.24Strauß, … weggekommen, 237. In some cases, as in Munich, lists with the names of those to be arrested were already available before the raids were carried out. In rural areas, the gendarmerie undertook so-called ‘patrols’ to arbitrarily detain ‘Gypsies’ they encountered. Seriously ill men and disabled veterans were also deported.25Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 116.
However, it was mainly young men who were able to work who were arrested, especially if they were not married and had no family to support. A Sinto from Gräfenhausen in the Palatinate reported on the course of the arrests: ‘On 15 June 1938, uniformed police or SS arrived very early in the morning. The mayor of Gräfenhausen, who was there, demanded that we all line up outside. The older, married men were to stay here, everyone else was arrested, even though we were all working properly at the time or were registered as jobseekers with the labour office.’26Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen Ludwigsburg, 414 AR-Z 42/83, p. 30, cited in Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 109. Based on reports from survivors and police sources, it can indeed be established that most of those arrested were employed. However, many of them were not in paid employment but were self-employed. This type of gainful employment, especially itinerant work, had been increasingly restricted since 1933 for racist reasons, so that the arrests of 1938 can also be seen as a powerful gesture by the Nazi regime to enforce an occupational prohibition directed specifically against Sinti and Roma.
This finding is illustrated below using the example of men from Cologne who were arrested as part of the June Action and whose files are in the records of the Cologne Regional Criminal Police Headquarters.27Detailed in Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 98–101. Only two of them had previous convictions, one a minor conviction for unauthorised possession of weapons and the other for ‘vagrancy’ and arson. To justify the detention, the Cologne KPLSt therefore relied on the passage in the decree referring to detainees who had ‘shown no willingness to work regularly’. The occupations practised by those affected were basket maker or musician (four people each), performer, horse dealer and travelling tradesman (one person each). These occupations were mentioned in the reasons given by the KPLSt, but were devalued and criminalised by combining them with the racist term ‘Gypsy’. This led to formulaic phrases that can be found in almost all ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ files on Sinti and Roma. The following was recorded about Josef Mettbach (1912–unknown): ‘Travelled around with his parents in Gypsy fashion and supported himself by making baskets. He has never had a regular job.’28Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abt. Rheinland, BR 2034/VH I/531, Order for preventive custody by the police, 14 June 1938. Zacharias Lehmann (1912–unknown), who emphasised that he had never been a burden on the welfare authorities, was transferred to Sachsenhausen on the following grounds: ‘He travels around in Gypsy fashion and calls himself a performer. He has no permanent employment.’29Ibid, BR 2034/VH I/523, order for preventive custody by the police, 14 June 1938. Josef Jakob (1904–1944) had also earned his living through self-employment. Nevertheless, the KPLSt wrote: ‘As a Gypsy, he has never had a steady job. Since leaving school he has been roaming around as a horse dealer.’30Ibid, BR 2034/20, order for preventive custody by the police, 14 June 1938.
The livelihoods of musicians had long been threatened by their exclusion from the Reich Chamber of Music on racial grounds. The forced illegality of their work as a result of the exclusion was now the undoing of many: Michael Reinhardt (1909–1987) was arrested by the Cologne police, like the other musicians, for ‘asocial behaviour’; the reasons given were familiar: ‘He travels around in Gypsy fashion and earns his money by making music without being in possession of a licence from the Reich Chamber of Music.’31Ibid, BR 2034/20, order for preventive custody by the police, 14 June 1938.
Harry Naujoks (1901–1983), a communist who had been interned in Sachsenhausen since 1936, described the arrival of the men arrested as part of the June Action in his memoirs. He aptly remarked that Sinti and Roma were sent to the camp solely ‘because they were Gypsies’.32Naujoks, Mein Leben im KZ Sachsenhausen, 77—82, quote 77.
In the Concentration Camps
The composition of the enforced communities in the concentration camps changed considerably with the arrival of the prisoners with the black triangle33Rarely and usually only temporarily, Sinti and Roma were also given brown triangles in concentration camps, see Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 267 f.—particularly in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, where they made up around half of the inmates. The camps were not prepared to take in such large numbers, and this further exacerbated the already poor provision of food and accommodation. Particularly tormented by the SS guards, many did not survive the first weeks and months; Jewish inmates in particular were severely mistreated.
Unlike political prisoners, for example, who were able to form a group on the basis of common convictions and thus try to improve their chances of survival, those stigmatised as ‘asocial’ or ‘work-shy’ were prevented by their heterogeneous character from developing a self-image as a solidary community. The colour of the triangle remained unchanged for the duration of their imprisonment and the inmates were marked ‘ASR’ or ‘AZR’ in the camp records, and this cemented their low position in the inmate hierarchy deliberately created by the SS.34Ayaß, “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus, 166—169. On the high death rate among the prisoners with the black angle, see Wachsmann, KL. A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 150.
The only way out was to be released from preventive custody, which was formally indefinite. According to the decree, however, an inmate’s status could only be reviewed after one year at the earliest. Some of the ‘preventive custody prisoners’ (1,432 in total) were released as part of an amnesty, which was declared on 20 April 1939 on the occasion of Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) 50th birthday. It is not known how many Sinti and Roma were among them. No Sinto or Rom was released from Sachsenhausen on this occasion.35Ayaß, “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus, 171; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 119. In June 1940, when the inmates arrested as part of the June Action were due for review, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) decreed, among other things, that both ‘Jews’36By deporting people categorised as “Jews“ to concentration camps—including around 30,000 men who had been arrested after the pogrom of November 1939—the Nazi regime exerted pressure on those arrested and their families to leave Germany in 1938/39. They were released if they were able to present valid exit papers. With the beginning of World War II, the possibility of obtaining a visa deteriorated dramatically, so that Jewish inmates were barred from leaving the camp. Cf. Schüler-Springorum, “Masseneinweisungen in Konzentrationslager“, 162. and ‘Gypsies’ were generally not to be released.37Reich Security Main Office, V – B 2 – No. 1277/40, Detention examination of persons arrested in accordance with the decree of 1 June 1938 – Tgb. No. 6001/295.38 – arrested persons, 18 June 1940, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 190. The fact that a few Sinti and Roma were released at all before this ban was only the result of the tireless efforts of their relatives.
The Relatives
Surviving criminal police files document the particular tenacity with which the parents, wives, siblings and children of the internees campaigned for their release. Lawyers were called in to lodge appeals and numerous petitions were sent to the RKPA, the Gestapo, the Reich Chancellery or even directly to the concentration camps.38Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 102. Many relatives also hoped to achieve something by making personal representations to the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin. The RKPA put a stop to these efforts by instructing all KPLSt on 28 June 1938 to prohibit relatives from moving to Berlin and to impose preventive custody in the event of violations.39Federal Archives Koblenz, Schumacher Collection (now BArch Berlin, R 187), telex StL. Berlin No. 38 194 of 28 June 1938; see also Schmid, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’”, 39; Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 109. Relatives were then summoned by the relevant authorities and had to sign statements acknowledging that they had been informed of this.
A decisive argument in favour of release could be a certificate from a company stating that a job was available. Relatives therefore endeavoured to persuade employers to make such promises and submitted them with their petitions. Josef Mettbach’s father pointed out his own plight to the Reich Chancellery, as his son who had been arrested in Cologne was the breadwinner of the family, and ended his letter with the words: ‘If my son is released, he has the opportunity to get work here at any time and to care for his elderly parents in the usual way. I may refer you to the certificate of employment, a copy of which I enclose here.’40Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abt. Rheinland, BR 2034/VH I/531, request from Friedrich W. to the Reich Chancellery, 24 April 1939. The RKPA requested statements on such applications from the responsible KPLSt. However, even if these were favourable, as in the case of Josef Mettbach, this did not mean that the RKPA approved his dismissal. Josef Mettbach remained in concentration camp detention until the end of the war.
The Cologne files show that most of the deportees had to remain in the camps; five out of about twenty men were released, two of them in November 1938 and three in July 1939.41Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 103 f. The Cologne examples thus reflect the figures known for Sachsenhausen: of the 442 Sinti and Roma arrested in June 1938, 106 were released again.42Müller, “Sachsenhausen“. Release from a concentration camp by no means signalled an end to the persecution. Many men, like a Sinto from Stolzenau an der Weser, were subsequently drafted into the Wehrmacht, later dismissed from the army as part of the racist exclusion of Sinti and Roma and finally deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.43Example in Schmid, “Die Aktion ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’”, 39.
How often women or men were arrested because they had stood up for their relatives has not yet been investigated. The story of Anna Petermann (1910–1984) is well known: Her husband, father and three brothers were arrested in June 1938. Together with her mother Barbara Petermann (1882–1942), she wrote petitions for their release. The two women were arrested in July 1938 and sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp.44Mertsching et al., “Anna Petermann“.
Consequences
With the wave of arrests in June 1938, the criminal police introduced preventive custody as an instrument that could be used at any time against the Sinti and Roma, who were generally stigmatised as ‘asocial’. The criminal police made extensive use of this in individual cases.45Examples in Fings et al., Rassismus, Lager, Völkermord, 104 f.
A year later, the RKPA once again ordered a major arrest operation; this time, only Roma from Burgenland were targeted. To legitimise the once again arbitrary arrests and deportations of 553 men to Dachau and 440 women to Ravensbrück concentration camp, it was sufficient to describe them as ‘workshy’ and ‘particularly asocial’.46Reich Criminal Police Office, Tgb. No. IA 2 d 6001/430.39, Vorbeugende Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage im Burgenland, 5 June 1939, in RSHA, Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung, 134vr; BArch, RD 19/29, Jahrbuch Amt V (RKPA) des RSHA 1939/1940, 5th ed. On the surface, the appearance of individual action against supposed ‘delinquents’ was maintained, but behind this was ‘the blanket justification for the imprisonment of an entire group’.47Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau, 122. In June 1939, the proportion of internees in relation to the total number of the target group—the Burgenland Roma—was even higher: according to the overview cited above, around 8,000 Roma living in Burgenland were arrested in 1940, or around one in five adults.48Among those deported from Burgenland were also some children and adolescents of both sexes, the exact number of whom is not known. However, they were probably a smaller group.
The deportation of hundreds of men and women who had provided for their families led to a further radicalisation in the persecution of Sinti and Roma. Local authorities did not want to bear the costs for the relatives left behind, and so the demands that they be sent to camps increased.49Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 116 f. The ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ had thus created new problems, which increased the pressure ‘from below’ on the Nazi regime to implement new, far-reaching measures. This was one of the factors that led to the internment of whole families.
Late Recognition
The men who had been arrested during the June Action were transferred from Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen to many other camps. Those who survived had little chance of being recognised and compensated after 1945. In the context of compensation policies, this group of victims was at a particular disadvantage, as it was always pointed out that they had been sent to the concentration camps in the interests of ‘crime prevention’ and not on racial grounds. Only a few were able to overcome these hurdles. For example, Julius Franz (unknown–1964), father of Lily van Angeren-Franz (1924–2011), who was arrested in the street on 13 June 1938, was able to assert his claims. His recognition as a victim of National Socialist persecution was based on the fact that he had been subjected to a racial examination by the Racial Hygiene Research Unit (RHF) in Sachsenhausen.50Schmid, “Polizeilich zwangsentführt”, 10.
It was only from the 1960s onwards that the authorities’ attitude of denial gradually changed, partly thanks to the commitment of the civil rights movement, which achieved recognition of the persecution of Sinti and Roma as National Socialist genocide in 1982. This group of victims was fully rehabilitated on 13 February 2020, when the German Bundestag decided to ‘recognise those persecuted by the National Socialists as “asocials” and “professional criminals”’.51German Bundestag, 19th electoral term, printed matter 19/14342 of 22 October 2019, motion by the CDU/CSU and SPD parliamentary groups, 3.
