LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- A 1939 letter from Albert Einstein warning of the "calamitous peril" to Jews posed by the Nazis has sold for almost $14,000, a California auction house says.

The letter -- written by the Nobel-winning physicist to a New York businessman, Hyman Zinn, praising him for his efforts to help Jews escape persecution in Adolf Hitler's Germany -- sold for $13,936, almost double its estimate, the BBC reported Wednesday.


"It must be a source of deep gratification to you to be making so important a contribution toward rescuing our persecuted fellow-Jews from their calamitous peril and leading them toward a better future," Einstein wrote to Zinn.

Einstein fled Germany and came to the United States when Hitler rose to power in 1933.

The typewritten, hand-signed letter with Einstein's embossed Princeton University address and the original mailing envelope was sold in Los Angeles and had carried a reserve price between $5,000 and $7,000.