A painting hidden from the Nazis restored on The Repair Shop

A treasured painting secretly sewn into the lining of a winter coat by a Ukrainian family to hide it from the Nazis in a forced labour camp has been restored in what viewers are calling the most moving  reveal ever.

Last night’s episode of the show saw Maria Kirk, 74, bring in a damaged 19th century painting of  and Child, which she described as the last connection to her eastern European family.

Ms Kirk said that, while her grandmother Halyna died in the forced labour camp in Northern Germany, her mother Irena and aunt Stefania survived.Her aunt gave her the painting in 1990 – but great strips of paint were missing and it was damaged.

And there were tears from Maria – and viewers – when the painting was restored and the retired florist cried as she said the artwork was ‘tangible proof that my family existed’ and it had been, to them, a ‘beacon of peace, faith and beauty’ through the horrors of the Second World War.

During the show, Maria explained that the artwork had been given to her grandfather by his father in the 1880s and it hung in a village church in Skowiatyn, Western Ukraine.

She then explained how the family took it with them when they fled to at the beginning of the war and kept swapping it from person to person stashed in a winter coat when they were captured and sent to a labour camp by their Nazi oppressors.

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The painting before it was restored (left) and then afterwards (right) in a reveal being called one of the most dramatic and emotional in the show’s history.The restoration involved carefully returning paint to creases where it had gone after being hidden and rolled up

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She said: ‘My grandfather Joseph had died. My grandmother Halyna, mother Irena and aunt Stefania fled to Poland. The Russians were coming on one side and the Germans on the other.’ 

‘They decided to take the painting.They took it out of the frame, rolled it up and stitched it inside the lining of a winter coat.

‘Eventually they were all captured by the Germans and sent to a forced labour camp in Northern Germany. They kept swapping the coat.’

In the episode, she wept as the show’s restoration expert Lucia Scalisi stripped back the dirt and removed the discolouration. 

After surviving the war Maria’s Stefania stayed in Germany, and kept the extraordinary painting.

Irena’s mother moved to the UK where she met Maria’s Polish father. 

Maria, a widow, is a retired florist from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. 

Describing what her family went through, she said: ‘They had to work in a German factory, making metal parts for fighter planes.

‘She told me once how they had to hide under rail trucks because they were being bombed.She also spoke once about a day when there had been a pogrom against the Jewish population and they were rounded up to go to work and had to step over the bodies.

‘I couldn’t understand why they had taken this painting and not something more practical, but now I get it.It was the precious link between them and their father… the family and life as it used to be.

‘The painting is a beacon of peace, faith and beauty out of the darkness and horror of war.’

The BBC show often welcomes special guests to the restoration barn – including actress artikel judi bola Dench and Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood.

But one remarkable guest was King Charles, who Jay Blades said the British public have ‘never seen’ him 

Presenter Jay, 52, and the team visited Dumfries House in Scotland for a one-off episode to mark the ‘s centenary filmed when Charles was still the Prince of Wales.

In : A Royal Visit, which aired in October, Charles needed help with an 18th-century bracket clock and a piece made for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee by British ceramics maker Wemyss Ware.

He said the damaged 19th century ceramic piece fell over when someone was opening a window – ‘they didn’t own up’, he joked.

Speaking to , Jay described the King as ‘a real joy’ to meet and said it was a ‘wow moment’ to have him on the show.

He said: ‘People often say never judge a book by its cover so you never listen to what people say until you’ve met the real person yourself.

‘It was a real joy and an honour to be working with him, wait until you see it, you’re going to be amazed.You never see him like this.’

Jay previously spoke about the importance of Charles appearing on the show and speaking to someone ‘from a council estate’.

He said: ‘You’ve got someone from a council estate and someone from a royal estate that have the same interests about apprenticeships and heritage crafts, and it is unbelievable to see that two people from so far apart, from different ends of the spectrum, actually have the same interests.’

In the episode, Charles met students from the Prince’s Foundation Building Craft Programme – a training initiative that teaches traditional skills such as blacksmithing, stonemasonry and wood carving.

The monarch said: ‘I still think the great tragedy is the lack of vocational education in schools, actually not everybody is designed for the academic.

‘I know from The Prince’s Trust, I have seen the difference we can make to people who have technical skills which we need all the time, I have the greatest admiration for people.

‘I think that’s been the biggest problem, sometimes that is forgotten. Apprenticeships are vital but they just abandoned apprenticeships for some reason. It gives people intense satisfaction and reward.’

Charles said the thing he ‘really loves’ is students returning as tutors year after year – ‘filling the school gaps’, he said.

Before the results are unveiled, Charles asked the crew: ‘Have you sorted this?The suspense is killing me.’

The monarch also lent Prince’s Foundation graduate Jeremy Cash to The Repair Shop to work with metalwork expert Dominic Chinea on a third item described as a fire set in the shape of a soldier with a poignant story behind its existence.