A woman who lost almost her entire family in the Holocaust was almost reduced to tears as the only item she has to remember her parents was given new life.
Wednesday’s episode of The Repair Shop proved emotional for Naama, 80, who came to the team for help restoring a special pair of baby shoes she had as a little girl.
Her parents, originally from Poland, both moved to Palestine – now Tel Aviv – before World War II.
There they met, fell in love and welcomed their daughter together.
Naama told the team how they suffered through difficult times as she was growing up, without much money to their name, and her parents cut holes in her baby shoes for her toes to poke through so that they would last longer.
The family were all alone in the world, she revealed, as their extended family – ‘not only grandparents, but aunts and uncles’ – were all horrifically murdered in the Holocaust.
After her own parents died, the old and battered pair of shoes became the ‘only tangible object I have of my parents,’ and she wished to hand the priceless item down to her own children and grandchildren.
While she hoped to have the tiny pair of shoes in ‘better condition,’ she was adamant she wanted to keep the cut in the toes, in remembrance of her parents, the times they lived through, and so it would continue to ‘look like the last day she wore them.’
Viewers were almost as touched as Naama herself, with several declaring they were reduced to tears from the moment they heard the story – never mind the big reveal.
‘OK, so I already know the woman with these shoes and the fix is gonna have me in bits inside 20 minutes,’ one fan wrote.
And, well, they were right.
Naama herself was visibly awed as the restored shoes – retaining the toe cuts – were revealed, admitting: ‘I thought I wouldn’t cry but I’m going to cry.’
‘It fills my heart with happiness,’ she said as she inspected the sentimental item, adding she wished ‘my parents could see them.’
Naama explained her mother came from a ‘tiny village’ in Poland and her family was so impoverished they could not afford shoes, recalling a photograph of her mother as a young girl at school, barefoot while her classmates wore shoes.
‘She was so happy when she could afford to give me my first shoes when I was one year old,’ she said.
‘You have made an old lady very happy.’
The Repair Shop airs Wednesdays at 8pm on BBC One
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