April 12, 1983

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.