Einstein spent 1936-1938 fighting in the Spanish Civil War; returning to France where in 1940, he was arrested and interned along with the other German émigrés until his liberation later in the spring of 1940 as a result of chaotic circumstances in the face of the rapidly progressing German invasion.
Bereft of alternatives, Einstein committed suicide in the Pyrenees town of Lestelle-Betharram on 5 July 1940 [REF].