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BERLIN (JTA) — A Berlin court sentenced a German lawyer to 5-1/2 years in jail for evading taxes on millions of dollars of commissions received for arranging German pensions for Israelis.

Frank Reppenhagen, 58, was found guilty Monday of not declaring some $7 million in commissions collected between 1990 and 1997 from a government program set up in 1980 as part of Germany's Holocaust reparations.

Report: Nazis looted 600,000 artworks

BERLIN (JTA) — The Nazis looted 600,000 artworks during Hitler's 12 years in power, according to a U.S. government expert.

Jonathan Petropoulose, research director on art for the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, estimated that 100,000 objects came from Western Europe and 300,000 from Eastern Europe and parts of the Soviet Union.

Some 200,000 works came from Germany itself, Petropoulose added during testimony Feb. 10 before the House Banking Committee in Washington.

War criminal loses appeal in Britain

LONDON (JTA) — Britain's first convicted war criminal lost an appeal against his double life sentence for murdering Jews in Belarus during World War II.

Britain's Appeal Court ruled Feb.10 it was satisfied that last April's verdict convicting 78-year-old former railway worker Anthony Sawoniuk on two charges of murders committed in 1942 had been handled correctly.