What could be in this old, dented Famous Ginger Wafers tin? The papers rolled up inside were priceless. They made it to the United States in 1912 on a ship from Europe. My grandmother traveled with her two young sons — my uncle and my father — on the Potsdam to be reunited with my grandfather who had come to Newark the previous year. She brought her passport, birth certificate, and ketuba.

Born in the Ukraine in 1883, she married there in 1908. Soon after finding these papers in 1993 in the pantry of my aunt's apartment, I had them translated and framed and hung the original on my dining room wall.

In another cookie tin, my aunt also saved letters her mother had received from her father, two brothers, and three sisters who remained in the old country. Among other things, the letters contained clues about the extended family. At the time, I had no idea I would eventually find the grandchildren of my grandmother's five siblings.

Piecing together my family tree and finding all the relatives has been a rewarding experience in its own right. Having relatives come to my home and marvel at the displayed documents bearing their family name is surreal.

Our first gathering was in 1996, 10 months after my cousin Yuriy emigrated from Ukraine to Brooklyn. At that time, we found out about each other through a cousin I had discovered with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. He, in turn, met Yuriy at a party given by another cousin in Jersey City.

Yuriy was in total shock when he saw the certificates on our wall with my grandmother's maiden name and dumbfounded when he recognized his family name, Temnogorod ("dark city"). While living in Eastern Europe, Yuriy and his uncle had searched for the name in various directories but never found any listing.

I continued to meet new cousins over the years. We have a special bond, sealed by those documents on my wall. In 1997, I put together our family history and distributed it, with the entire family tree, to my relatives, continuing to update the information with an annual family newsletter. Copies are circulating in many states and in Ukraine, Russia, and Israel.

Few of my cousins remain in Russia and Ukraine, and many relatives live in Israel. When Yuriy's uncle visited his brother (Yuriy's father) in Brooklyn in 2004, he also came to my home in South Orange. Yuriy interpreted my questions and his uncle's answers as I recorded some stories about his life in Ukraine. Along with many chilling tales, he warmed my heart when he recalled being told Torah stories during World War II while in hiding with his paternal grandfather.

Still amazed by my grandmother's birth certificate and ketuba, Yuriy recently brought his first cousin's son, Pavel Temnogorod, to play Ping-Pong at our house. Pavel, born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is the teenage Maccabiah table tennis champion of Israel. After winning the championship, he came to America to visit his father's uncle and cousins. Yuriy's son and Pavel are the last two of our family to carry the Temnogorod name as far as we know. I stood by, wondering what was going through Pavel's mind as he read the documents. I took out the notebook filled with letters from our ancestors, including original letters from my great-grandfather — Pavel's great-great-great-grandfather — and watched as he read them.

I never knew my grandparents Sarah and Nathan Mark (Muravin/a) who raised their six children in Newark; they passed away before I was born. I sure know a lot about them now, and I keep their memory alive so that my children will know all about their ancestry and their place in the world.