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Gruber, who was a New York Herald Tribune foreign correspondent, decided then that she would use "whatever skills I had" to aid the immigration of Jews to their homeland.

The author of 14 books, who at age 86 is as sharp and active as ever, is back in the spotlight again. "The Long Way Home," a film about the Exodus 1947 that includes long segments of her eyewitness accounts and her photographs, last month won the Oscar for best documentary.

Gruber will share her recollections at an "Israel at 50" event on Tuesday in Cotati. And she will speak at two annual community observances for Yom HaShoah — Wednesday in San Francisco and Thursday in Redwood City. All the events are free.

Yom HaShoah, which commemorates the victims of the Nazi genocide, starts at sundown Wednesday.

More than 50 years after World War II, the Brooklyn native doesn't believe enough people today realize how ghastly life was for Jews after they left the concentration camps.

"The Jews didn't just walk out and live happily ever after," she said. "They were treated horribly."

Many of them tried to return to their cities or shtetls, only to realize their families were dead and their property was stolen by hostile neighbors.

"The smell of blood was in the streets," Gruber said.

But stories like that of the Exodus 1947 helped awaken the world to the continued suffering and the need for a Jewish state.

The ship set sail from France to Palestine in July 1947 with 4,500 refugees, including 1,000 orphans. The goal was to make it past the British naval blockade. Gruber stood on the dock in Haifa and watched the boat pull in.

It looked like a "matchbook splintered by a nutcracker," she said. On the sea, British warships had rammed the Exodus 1947 and soldiers had boarded it. The refugees tried to fight back, using tins of food. The soldiers killed two 16-year-old orphans and first mate Bill Bernstein, a San Franciscan.

In Haifa, the British forced the refugees onto three "hospital" ships supposedly headed for nearby Cyprus. Gruber flew to Cyprus and waited three days. But the ships never arrived. The British sent the vessels, which were actually prison ships, back to France.

Gruber headed to the French port and was determined to interview the refugees. So she disguised herself as a nurse in order to sneak onto the vessels for a short time. The Jews told her they would make it to Palestine or die on the ships.

Three weeks later, the British made the mistake of deciding to send the Jews to Germany — the nation that had tried to exterminate them. Instantly, the world press jumped onto the story.

The British chose Gruber as the sole representative of the American press corps. As she climbed on board one of the ships, the refugees raised the Union Jack, which they had defaced with a huge swastika.

Gruber's photo of the flag became Life magazine's Photo of the Week.

In Germany, the refugees were pulled off the ships and locked in a British camp there. The British action helped galvanize world opinion in favor of the Jews. And within three months, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

The Exodus 1947 refugees eventually made it to the Jewish state.

In addition to writing articles and shooting photos, Gruber penned a book about the Exodus 1947 that became background material for the Hollywood drama "Exodus," which starred a young Paul Newman.

Gruber then covered the 1948 War of Independence and eventually every mass immigration to Israel, including those of the Iraqis, Yemenites, Romanians, Russians and Ethiopians.

Still, Gruber wishes she could have done more during the war itself — despite having taken part in the U.S. government's secret mission to bring 1,000 refugees from Europe to an army base in New York in 1944.

"Everybody could have done more…Everybody is guilty," she said. "I always wish I had done more."