What was going on when I was born?

Some were searching for a brother or a sister. Others were trying to find more distant relatives or old friends. But many who came to the reunion of survivors of Nazi Germany's concentration camps were just searching. ''I'm looking for anyone - cousins, friends, anyone from my town,'' said Genia Lemel of Milwaukee, a survivor of Hasag concentration camp in Poland. ''But no one is here. No one is left. I know it, but I keep hoping.'' The woman was part of a group of 12,000 to 15,000 Holocaust survivors who gathered here today for the start of a three-day reunion of European Jews who survived Nazi brutalities, the largest of its kind ever held. Tonight, President Reagan said in a speech to the survivors, ''Our most sacred task now is insuring that this greatest of human tragedies, the Holocaust, never fades -that its lessons are not forgotten.''

A gas station attendant called Dr. William C. DeVries, the surgeon who had implanted an artificial heart in Dr. Barney B. Clark, and said, ''Doctor, someone doesn't like you very much.'' The attendant discovered 22 finishing nails had been driven into the treads and sidewalls of the front left tire of the surgeon's car and the brake cable had been sawed in half. Dr. DeVries, who had coolly handled one medical crisis after another for 112 days after implanting the artificial heart, was frightened. The tire blew while his 17-year-old son, Jon, was driving several friends to a ski area. The car went into a snowbank at the ski area's parking lot. No one was hurt.

International The search for Middle East peace has reached a dead end as far as Jordan is concerned, King Hussein is said to believe. He is said to think that Jordan has exhausted all of its diplomatic choices and that there is nothing more that Jordan can do now to foster a settlement. (Page A1, Column 2.) The Lisbon police questioned for a second day a young man traveling on a Moroccan passport about the slaying of Dr. Issam Sartawi, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Ambassador Moulay Slama Benzidane of Morocco said the passport was false and the man who carried it was not a Moroccan. (A15:1-3.)

Eva Rabinowitz, a teacher of handicapped children at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, is in her middle 50's, a product of the time when able women graduating from college were discouraged from pursuing most careers except teaching. Her daughter, Linda Rabinowitz, who is 27, also enjoys working with children. But she is a doctor, a pediatric intern at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. As more opportunities for women have opened, talented young women like Dr. Rabinowitz have increasingly chosen careers that they found more appealing and more lucrative than teaching. Largely as a consequence, the academic ability of young teachers and teaching candidates is much lower than it used to be, and many educators and parents believe that less able teachers have diminished the quality of education in the nation's public schools.

An alliance of civic, business and educational organizations is seeking to interest more New York City families in the public school system. The campaign is aimed at families like that of Lucy Martin and Jack Gianino, who send their three children to private schools despite a belief in quality public education and the strain of paying a quarter of their income for tuition. Peter and Virginia Carry, however, send their 6-year-old daughter to a public school, even though they worry over academic standards and safety and can afford a private school. Here are the stories of the two families, who like thousands of others in New York have agonized over standards, costs and social implications in choosing schools.

Stock market prices advanced sharply yesterday, with the blue-chip, technology and energy issues leading the upswing. The market's advance was attributed in part to a drop in interest rates yesterday for government securities, and a decline of nearly a quarter of a percentage point in the key Federal funds rate for overnight loans among banks. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 17.12 points, to 1,141.83. In the past three sessions, the blue-chip indicator, which is composed of stocks of 30 prominent companies, has risen more than 28 points and is once again within striking distance of its record closing high of 1,145.90 set on March 24.

Over the past two years, the number of companies moving their plants from Minnesota to other states or abroad reached a record high. And to the surprise of many people here, most of those relocating were young, expanding companies, not the old, declining industries that have been associated with cities in the North. ''The companies that departed were growing companies, businesses with desired products, established markets,'' said the State Small Business Development Center in St. Paul in a study of the trend. And what is happening here is happening elsewhere. Indeed, the old industrial areas of the North are plagued today not only by a decline in heavy industry, but also by a more recent rise in the number of ''footloose industries,'' those that move easily to take advantage of lower costs or easier access to markets.

Some of the nation's largest banks are mounting a big lobbying effort here in an effort to mine the nearly $50 billion on deposit in Florida banks. The leaders of the effort, including New York's Citicorp and Chemical Bank, hope to persuade Florida legislators to approve measures permitting ownership of Florida banks by banks based in other states. Faced with stiff opposition from most of the Florida banking community, the out-of-state banks have assembled an impressive cadre of lobbyists and public relations representatives to take their case before the lawmakers, the news media and special interest groups around the state. The sales team includes former Gov. Leroy Collins of Florida; Ken Plante, a former state senator and high-ranking state Republican; Bruce Smathers, a former Florida Secretary of State and the son of a former United States Senator, George A. Smathers, and a Tallahassee public relations representative, Lawton Chiles 3d, son of Florida's current Democratic Senator, Lawton Chiles Jr. Stakes High The developments here are being watched throughout the country because of the high stakes involved and also as a possible indication of how such a move might influence other Southern states where the issue is essentially dormant, except in Tennessee. Legislatures in several New England states have adopted interstate banking laws of a more limited scope, restricting ownership agreements to banks in states within the region.

''It has to be told, it has to be relived so it won't be repeated.

Two men, both considered political longshots just 60 days ago, ended their bitter election campaigns today to become mayor of the nation's second-largest city. With last-minute campaigning that included news conferences, radio addresses and several neighborhood appearances, Representative Harold Washington, the Democrat, and Bernard E. Epton, the Republican, brought to an end the most expensive and one of the most racially divisive municipal election campaigns in recent American history. Regardless of who wins in Tuesday's balloting, in which a turnout of 80 percent of the city's 1.6 million voters is expected, the man who becomes Chicago's 42d mayor will be a first. Either Will Be a First If the 60-year-old Congressman wins, he will become the first black elected as mayor in Chicago's 150-year history. If the 61-year-old Mr. Epton triumphs, he will be Chicago's first Jewish mayor and the first Republican to win here since 1927. Each has said his first task will be to heal the wounds of a campaign marked by charges of racism in this racially divided city of three million people.

Because of a mechanical error, the Sky Watch map on Sunday depicted the night sky for the week just ended rather than the coming one. The correct map appears today on page C8.

The report of the Presidential Commission on Strategic Forces virtually repeals six years of dogma about the growing vulnerability of fixed land-based missiles to a Soviet attack and the consequent doubts about American nuclear deterrent power. As with John F. Kennedy's charge of a ''missile gap'' favoring the Soviet Union in the 1960 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan's campaign warnings about the ''window of vulnerability'' have been transformed into a problem for the future. The bipartisan report states that vulnerability of land-based missiles is a problem and that ''reasonable survivability of fixed targets, such as ICBM silos, may not outlast this century.'' But it cautions repeatedly that the full breadth of American nuclear power -long-range bombers, submarine-launched missiles and land-based missiles - guarantees deterrence, and that ''different components of our strategic forces should be assessed collectively and not in isolation.''