But she and her friend were not shot. They and the other women were ordered to go home and clean up the shattered glass, the smashed doors, the broken furniture.

Three years later, despite desperate attempts to emigrate, she was still in Germany and taken to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. She survived there until she was liberated by the Allies in 1945.

''That is the outline,'' Mrs. Joelson said. ''That is enough.''

As she spoke, others cautiously approached and added details, as if they were partners in a collective nightmare.

Norbert Lowenstein, an 80-year-old from the town of Giessen, said: ''I lost 35 members of my family. Thirty-five. I am the only one left.'' He never married. ''Never found the right girl,'' he said with a sad smile. Ordered to Destroy Synagogue Gerda Sternberg, 67, said that in her town, Bosen, near the French border, the Nazis did not destroy the synagogue. ''They gave us the axes and ordered us to do it,'' she said. ''My father was a very Orthodox man. They made him destroy the holy ark.'' Her father, her mother and her sister died in concentration camps. ''I never found out where or when,'' she said. She marks the anniversaries of their deaths - on their birthdays. ''They are the only days I have.''

Fritz Falkenstein, 76, remembered the Nazis coming to his house in Hochneukirch, near Cologne, and asking for his father, who owned a local cigar factory. ''I told them, 'My father is sick. Take me instead.' They did, but who knew what they would be like? In the Rheinland we did not know what animals they were.''

Mr. Falkenstein was sent to Dachau, but was sent home a few months later to sign over his father's factory to the Nazis. ''Our factory was being 'Aryanized,' '' he said. ''We had employed 150 to 160 people. When we finally got out and came to America, we were lucky to get jobs in a factory. And the women washed floors.'' Lined Up Before Machine Guns

Morris Hubert, an 82-year-old retired butcher, was also arrested on Kristallnacht as he drove a car near his home in Frankfurt. ''The Nazis lined up 50 of us before the machine guns,'' he said. ''The commandant was called away to take a phone call. We waited. When he returned he sent us away. I still do not know why.''