What was going on when I was born?

The Federal Government said yesterday that it was planning to deny nearly $22 million in Medicaid funds to a state center on Staten Island for the retarded and disabled on the ground that the center, formerly known as Willowbrook, had violated many Federal health and safety standards. Federal officials said the violations included a lack of sufficient food for patients, many of whom cannot feed themselves; inadequate treatment and therapy programs, and substandard living and bathing facilities. The violations recalled those cited in 1972 that led to a Federal Court decision requiring the state to improve conditions and reduce overcrowding at Willowbrook. In a pledge last year to close the antiquated main building of the center, Governor Cuomo described it as ''once a national symbol of neglect and callousness.''

Sometimes it seems there is no Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, not the way there is a Greenwich Village in Manhattan or a Middle Village in Queens. Bed-Stuy, as the area is commonly known, has a definite nucleus - the busy corner of Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street has been called its Times Square - and, in Flushing Avenue and Broadway, firm northern and eastern boundaries. But where it melts into Crown Heights on the south and Fort Greene and Clinton Hill on the west, Bed-Stuy's edges seem as fluid as an amoeba's. And residents complain that the community is defined not by geography, but by social pathology and race. Whether the boundaries are those used by the City Planning Commission or the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, which respectively estimate the population at 136,000 and at least 400,000 of Brooklyn's 723,000 blacks, by all counts Bed-Stuy, which is 90 percent black, is the second-largest black community in the country, after Chicago's South Side.

President Reagan, standing by his decision to lay a wreath at a German military cemetery next month, said today that most of the soldiers buried there were as much victims of the Nazis as the inmates of the concentration camps. The President's remarks immediately stirred a new burst of criticism from American Jewish groups and others, who reiterated demands that he cancel the cemetery visit. ''I think that there is nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.''

Major institutional shareholders of the Unocal Corporation have reacted negatively to the oil company's defensive maneuver to avoid a takeover by T. Boone Pickens. Several of them said yesterday that they would probably tender their shares to the investor group led by Mr. Pickens rather than pledge them to Unocal in an offer that may never be activated. Mr. Pickens, through an investment group called Mesa Partners II, has offered to purchase 64 million shares of Unocal for $54 a share. If successful, the bid would give the group 50.1 percent of Unocal's 173.7 million shares outstanding.

In a strategic move to bolster lagging earnings and to position itself for the future, the Manufacturers Hanover Corporation, the nation's fourth- largest bank holding company, yesterday announced a reorganization plan. Under that plan, the highly centralized company will be broken into five distinct units, each a separate profit center headed by its own sector executive vice president. John F. McGillicuddy, the company's 54-year-old chairman, said yesterday that the reorganization should result in greater profits, but added that it was premature to predict how much earnings would be improved, or when. ''In all fairness to those five people who have just been brought into the loop, it will take some time.''

Elie Wiesel, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, pleaded today with Secretary of State George P. Shultz to dissuade President Reagan from inflicting ''pain and shame'' on Americans by visiting a cemetery where Nazi war dead are buried. ''Mr. Secretary, please be our emissary,'' Mr. Wiesel said, turning to Mr. Shultz at a mournful Capitol ceremony honoring the American liberation of the German death camps of World War II. ''Tell those who need to know that our pain is genuine, our outrage deep and our perplexity infinite.'' Mr. Wiesel spoke before learning of remarks today in which the President contended that both the Jews slain in the Holocaust, and some of the soldiers, many of them draftees, who are buried in the German cemetery that he intends to visit, were victims of Nazism.

FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1985 International Nicaraguan rebels won't receive more American weapons this year, according to a White House official. The official said that President Reagan, faced with almost certain defeat in Congress, had agreed to accept a compromise under which any United States assistance to the insurgents between now and Oct. 1 could be used only for ''nonlethal'' purposes, including trucks and uniforms but excluding guns and ammunition. (Page A1, Column 6.) American ''nonlethal'' aid that will total $7.5 million has started arriving in an area that serves as a major Nicaraguan rebel camp on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. (A1:5-6.)

Ted Turner, the Atlanta broadcasting entrepreneur, yesterday made his expected offer to buy CBS Inc. But the view on Wall Street was that he stood only a slim chance of succeeding. Richard MacDonald, an analyst for the First Boston Corporation, an investment house, called the proposal ''a brilliant idea, a fabulous blueprint for someone who wants to take over CBS.'' But he added, ''It will never happen.'' CBS, the dominant television network in ratings and also a power in radio, magazines and records, is certain to fight for its independence. Yesterday, though, it declined to comment until it could study the proposal, which it characterized as ''complex.'' In his offer, Mr. Turner, acting without financial partners, offered to buy 67 percent of the broadcasting giant, but he would pay no cash. Instead, he would give CBS stockholders a package of stock in his much smaller company, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., as well as bonds and other notes paying high interest. Later he would offer to buy the rest of CBS on the same terms.

Friday ECLECTIC HARP SOUNDS The Rizzoli Bookstore sold 15,000 of his records just by playing the music while people browsed; customers flocked to see who was responsible for such magical sounds. Europeans know his music well, but Americans are only beginning to discover the unique work of Andreas Vollenweider, the Swiss harpist who has taken an unlikely instrument for popular music and enlarged its sonic spectrum with the subtle use of electronics. Add a spicy mixture of other influences - the West Indies, the East Indies and other parts of the Orient - and Mr. Vollenweider's own rhythmic innovations and you get such successful albums as ''Behind the Gardens'' and ''Caverna Magica.'' Their popularity was such that the harpist, on his first American tour last fall, played to full houses in Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and New York. Tonight at 8 o'clock, Mr. Vollenweider and his ''electro-acoustic harp'' will perform again at the Beacon Theater, Broadway and 74th Street. Tickets are $14.50, $16 and $17.50. Information: 787-1477. A ROUSING REUNION

The economy slowed sharply to a weak 1.3 percent annual growth rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department reported today. That was the smallest growth since the recovery began in late 1982 and was far below the 4.3 percent rate of the final 1984 quarter. According to most economists, the report dashed hopes that the United States could achieve the Reagan Administration's 3.9 percent growth target for 1985. One of the implications is an adverse effect on the Federal budget deficit because lower economic activity, among other things, implies lower incomes, profits and Treasury revenues.

The United States Government has begun to provide $7.5 million in medical and other nonmilitary aid to an area near a main camp in Honduras for guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan Government. A private American relief agency, Friends of America, is working in the same zone, near the Nicaraguan border, supported by conservative United States legislators and private church groups. Officials in charge of the relief programs strongly denied in interviews that their intention was to assist guerrillas fighting the Sandinista Government, and a reporter found no evidence that either program has directly helped armed rebel fighters. But the projects appear to offer an example of how humanitarian assistance can indirectly support guerrilla fighters.

Mayor Koch and the leader of the city's largest municipal union announced a tentative agreement yesterday on a three-year contract covering 115,000 city employees. The agreement, with District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was reached in a hastily convened four- hour bargaining session that caught other labor leaders by surprise after nearly a year of sporadic negotiations. The last contract expired June 30. Under the tentative pact, most workers would receive 5 percent wage increases in each of the first two years of the contract and 6 percent in the third year. The average salary for members of the union is $16,000, union officials said.