Still aged only 16 he was approached by Sir Henry Wood’s assistant to apply for a post in Brighton to play the viola he borrowed a viola, played it that evening, and auditioned for the job next morning and got it! (11) Within four years he was playing for the London Symphony Orchestra, at 20 years old, one of its youngest players, having beaten off very stiff competition. He was awarded various bursaries as a result of his talent including the Bache Scholarship in 1935. His student record shows that he won first the bronze then the silver medals for violin, culminating in the Certificate of Merit, the highest award possible in that instrument. He was a student of piano and violin from 1932 (when he won the four year Sainton Scholarship for violin in September of that year) (9) till 1940. Three years after his Barmitzvah, at the age of 16, he won the Westmoreland scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music to study violin (8). But Simmon, the gifted and sensitive musician, loved to listen to music whenever he could – there was never enough money to attend concerts – and had his heart elsewhere. Simmon attended the North London Polytechnic School between 19, attached to the nearby College which stood as now in Holloway Road (7) he was very bright and the headteacher advised the family that he should apply for a mathematics scholarship at Oxford University. ![]() Sheila recalls how Simmon’s bedroom faced over the back garden in Camden and when they went round to visit, they would secretly play ball with him from the garden, throwing the ball back and forth to him in his first floor room! She remembers that he practiced intensely and often and according to a strict timetable his parents laid down they were enormously proud of his skill and had high hopes for him as a top musician in the years to come. How successful this was remains a mystery. Sheila Gaiman, a first cousin and daughter of Pearl (Simmon’s aunt) recalls (6) that after Simmon had shown his musical talent (on the violin and later viola, at the age of seven) his parents tried to shelter him from the normal rough and tumble games that other boys got up to, for fear he would damage his hands. Simmon’s mother did not enjoy good health and for many years his father, with his European accent, worked in his tailoring shop in the basement of their house, so he could be near to and care for his wife at home. Moses became Morris and the couple married in 1913.Īn orthodox Jewish working class family, they first lived in Stamford Hill, Hackney and later moved to a rented house in Camden Town where Shimeon (later Simmon) and his younger sister Blanche were born. Here he met and fell in love with Fradel Kraftcheck (5) (who later shortened her name to Frieda/Freda Kraft), born in Warsaw in 1895, but brought to England with her brother and parents when she was three years old. Around 1912, he arrived in London having crossed Europe in stages by train from city to city. He made his way to Odessa and later to Roumania, where he stayed for some years working hard to save for his emigration to America. Moses himself had become a master tailor at the age of 16 years, and had thus earned the right – under the anti-Semitic laws of the time - to move from village to village for work in Czarist Russia. At least one of Moses’ stepsisters fled Russia to Israel where relatives live to this day. ![]() When his first wife died (she was the mother of Moses) he re-married and had a second family. The father of Moses Vlatutin was a regimental tailor who travelled, with his family, as the regiment was posted from place to place. ![]() ![]() Simmon Latutin was born at number 20, North Villas (2) off Camden Square, Camden Town, London, on July 25th 1916.(3) His father was Moses Vlatutin, born in Riga (4) in 1887, distantly related, so the family history has it, to a famous Russian Jewish general of the same name who had later lifted the siege of Kiev – his home town - in World War Two and died there after the war. “The King has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the GEORGE CROSS in recognition of most conspicuous gallantry in carrying out hazardous work in a very brave manner to Captain Simmon Latutin 242974 Somalia Gendarmerie (Harrow Middlesex).” - London Gazette 6th August 1946
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