A series of letters written by Albert Einstein was expected to fetch as much as $1-million (R12-million) on auction in the US yesterday. The missives included the physicist's take on subjects including God, the atomic bomb, adultery, and how McCarthyism risked ushering in a US version of Hitler.It is one of the largest collections of his letters ever to go under the hammer and individual notes were expected to fetch as much as $40000.Joseph Maddalena, CEO of Los Angeles auction house Profiles in History, said: "We have amassed a magnificent group of personal and profound handwritten Einstein letters."In 1923, as anti-Semitism in Germany grew, Einstein wrote to his children: "I'm sitting here quietly in Holland after I was informed that there are certain people in Germany who are after me as a 'Jewish Holy Man'. In Stuttgart, they even had a billboard where I was ranked first among the richest Jews. Have been thinking about giving up my position in Germany altogether, but I am not doing that because it would be morally damaging to the German intellectuals."Ten years later, in 1933, he said to his son Eduard: "For the time being I will not be returning to Germany, perhaps never again. I think of you very often."Einstein wrote: "The Relativity Theory has now been experimentally proven, but the issue of the connection of gravitation and electricity is shipwrecked, at least in my opinion. Theoretical physics is currently enormously thorny."Also among the letters is one from 1945 written to Guy Raner jnr, a history teacher in California who had asked if there was any truth in a rumour Einstein had been converted by a Jesuit priest. The physicist wrote: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been, an atheist ."In another letter to Raner, in 1949, Einstein declared himself agnostic and said that in his opinion "the idea of a personal God is a childlike one". ..