What was going on when I was born?

With clouds of steam pulsing from his nostrils, Sparky, a brown draft horse, trotted up the snowy slope towing a log from a dead elm. ''He's what the Amish call an ambitious horse,'' Isis Melhado said, panting after trying to keep up with Sparky.

Eva Kor, from Terre Haute, Ind., and her sister, Miriam Czaigher, from Ashkelon, Israel, stood this morning at the railroad ramp at Auschwitz where in 1944 Dr. Josef Mengele, chief physician at the Nazi death camp, separated them as 10-year-olds from their mother. They were then added to the group of Jewish twins and dwarfs upon whom the doctor experimented.

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1985 International

EVERYBODY in New York needs a better apartment, and lately it seems that Bernard Mendik has been

The Washington Capitals scored three goals in the final 10 minutes today, squelching an Islander rally and beating their Patrick Division rivals for the second time in less than 24 hours, this time by 5-2 at Capital Centre. The Islanders were dominated for most of the contest, which was marked by repeated stoppages of play and disputes between players, coaches and officials. They trailed by 2-0 in the third period, but came back with Mike Bossy's 39th goal of the season 8 minutes 30 seconds into the session. Then Patrick Flatley tied it 97 seconds later with his 14th goal of the season.

A police van bearing the unconscious body of Michael Stewart pulled into Bellevue Hospital at 3:22 A.M. on a warm September day in 1983. The doors swung open, and Mr. Stewart was lifted onto a hospital gurney. He had been hogtied - his ankles bound together, pulled behind his back and tied to his hands with elastic cord. His body - 5 feet, 11 inches tall, 143 pounds - was covered with bruises.

The decision earlier this month by the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) to spin off its money-losing minerals subsidiary to stockholders is the latest strategic withdrawal in a general retreat by oil companies from the mining industry they embraced just a few years before. In the inflationary late 1970's and early 1980's, the oil companies had surplus cash to spend as a result of high oil prices. Buying up mining companies, so the theory went, was smart because of the supposed rising value of assets in the ground as opposed to the then ethereal quality of paper money.

The rise in the cost of health care slowed last year, but medical costs still climbed much faster than prices in general. The Consumer Price Index for all items rose 4 percent in 1984, while the cost of medical care rose 6.1 percent, according to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that 6.1 percent represented the third consecutive yearly decline in the rate of medical inflation.

The Hyundai Motor Company of Korea will begin selling cars in the United States later this year when it introduces a new, front-wheel-drive subcompact as a 1986 model. The company said its initial plans are to build an additional 100,000 cars a year for sale in the United States. The formal announcement of the move, the first of its kind by a Korean automobile company, is expected on Monday. Company officials made it clear over the weekend that their strategy is to concentrate on the market for small, relatively inexpensive cars that the Japanese auto makers have largely abandoned in favor of more elaborate and expensive models.

Mayor Koch said yesterday that he had ordered a ''comprehensive'' investigation into allegations against the Chief Medical Examiner. The Medical Examiner, Dr. Elliot M. Gross, said that he would cooperate and that he expected to be ''completely vindicated.'' Pending the inquiry, Mayor Koch said, he would make no changes in the Medical Examiner's office. The inquiry was prompted by charges in The New York Times yesterday that Dr. Gross had produced misleading or inaccurate autopsy reports on people who had died in police custody.

Three months ago Prof. Calvert Watkins, a linguist at Harvard, was examining some dry documents in an extinct language of ancient Anatolia when he came upon a string of words that filled him with excitement. Translated, the words said: When they came from steep Wilusa. . . . The text broke off at that point. But for many reasons, Professor Watkins believed that he had found the opening line of a song or epic about Troy, the ''steep Ilios'' of Homer's ''Iliad,'' that was written down in the Trojans' own language more than 500 years before Homer.

Members of a special committee of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries remained deadlocked today over a new price structure for differing grades of oil, to bring them into line with the market and end price discounting. The oil ministers who are members of the price differentials committee failed to agree on a unified proposal to lay before an emergency ministerial meeting, which begins here on Monday.