While the findings may have implications for survivors of mass atrocities in general, they are of immediate concern to the 238,600 Holocaust survivors still living in Israel, said study co-author Dr. Micha Barchana.

"The bad news is that Holocaust survivors are at a higher risk to get cancer, but the good news is that we can do something [about it]," he said. "We are focusing on the practical implementation of the research results: the need for survivors to participate in early-detection programs that are offered in Israel as well as in most modern countries, due to the finding that classifies them as a high-risk population," he explained.

Barchana serves as the director of the National Cancer Registry in the Israeli Health Ministry and is also a senior lecturer in the school of public health at the University of Haifa in Israel.

He and his colleagues presented their research earlier this year at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, held in Lyon, France. The work was funded by the Israel Cancer Society.

Barchana's team reviewed records from the Israeli government's Central Bureau of Statistics to first draft a list of all Jewish immigrants to Israel born in Europe between 1920 and 1945.

They then turned to the Israeli Health Ministry's National Cancer Registry to compile cancer incidence and death rates among these immigrants.

The researchers found that those immigrants born between 1920 and 1945 who came to Israel between the end World War II and 1989 were at significantly higher risk for cancer than immigrants born between 1920 and 1939 who migrated to Israel before the onset of World War II.

Barchana said his team does not know how many of the post-war European immigrants suffered through the experience of Nazi concentration camps or wartime Jewish ghettos. However, he said his team assumed that many or most did, and that, in any case, "all the Jews in Europe at war time had gone through severe food deprivation and other stresses."

Higher cancer risks seemed to linger for decades for this group, the researchers found. Male Holocaust survivors experienced a 14 percent higher cancer incidence rate than pre-war immigrants and were 2.4 times more likely to get cancer than their pre-war compatriots.

Female Holocaust survivors had a 21 percent higher rate of cancer than pre-war immigrants and were 2.3 times more likely to have a cancer diagnosis than pre-war immigrants.

Breaking down cancer incidence by specific diseases, the authors found that Holocaust survivors were at a significantly higher risk for lung cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma (a rare form of skin malignancy), and prostate cancer.

Heightened risks for certain other cancers stood out. For example, male Holocaust survivors were nine times more likely to be diagnosed with cancer of the large intestine than pre-war immigrants. Female Holocaust survivors faced more than double the risk for cancer of the large intestine and a 50 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer, the study found.

In addition, Barchana's team found that the younger the Holocaust survivor was during the war, the greater their risk for getting cancer. In fact, most of the increase in risk among Holocaust survivors was borne by those who were 14 years of age or younger during World War II.

Barchana said that finding has been shown in other studies involving survivors of terrible events. "Research on A-bomb survivors in Japan clearly shows that women that were at a young age are at higher risk of developing cancer later in life," he said. Similar data is emerging among those affected by the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, Barchana added.

Patients who had survived the Holocaust also had a tougher battle to fight off the disease once it was diagnosed, the researchers found. According to Barchana, that may be due to the fact that "Holocaust survivors are being diagnosed at later stages compared to the control group."

Five-year cancer survival rates were 5 percent to 13 percent lower among Holocaust survivors compared to other immigrants, regardless of sex or age.

"We have a number of experienced nurses, and it's the first time within their collective memory that we've had six sets of twins born in such close proximity," Sparrow spokeswoman Nan Simons told the Lansing State Journal for a story Friday.

Keeler, of Jackson, said it's a story she'll tell her sons, Nick and Ty, as they grow up.

"That was an extraordinary couple of days, and they were part of it," Keeler said. "They will forever be known in Sparrow history, and that's kind of cool."

Five sets of the twins were boys. The other two infants were girls.

"It's fun for Sparrow to mark a record like this," Simons said. "Six sets of twins: That's a lot of babies."

In 1899, colonial settlers made it a crime to accuse someone of being a witch or wizard - wary of the witch hunts in Europe a few centuries earlier which saw many people burned at the stake after such accusations.

But to most Zimbabweans, especially those who grew up in the rural areas, it has been absurd to say that the supernatural does not exist.

In fact, it is not hard to find vivid stories about the use of magic.

Alfred, for example, believes that he was bewitched at work some years ago, making him partly bald.

He described how after supper one evening as he and his wife were retiring to bed his hair disappeared.

"When my wife came into the bedroom she look at me and said, 'What happened to your hair? Where's it gone?'

"She saw a bald patch from the forehead going back on the side of the head. There was no trace of it," he says.

He spent seven months visiting traditional healers to make it grow back.

"She made some incisions round the bald patch, put some powdery muti (medicine) and lo and behold within a few day the hair had grown."

Fetishes

There are many other accounts of the use of magic, and the new law effectively legitimises many practices of traditional healers.

These include rolling bones to foretell the future, divination, attempts to communicate with the dead, using muti - traditional powders and fetishes - to ensure the desired sex of a child.

But there will be some legal grey areas, like whether it is legal for a husband to place some charms in his bedroom - charms that may injure his wife if she is unfaithful.

Professor Claude Mararikei - a sociologist and the chairman of Zimbabwe's Traditional Medical Practitioner's Council - argues that witchcraft has some positive benefits in the modern world.

He cites the example of a man who stole some bewitched cement that became stuck to the thief's shoulders so he could not remove the bag.

"So if you have that knowledge to capture a thief in a cattle kraal when he comes for the cows, well and good. It's like electrifying the fence round your house," he says.

'Waste of time'

Others believe that the country would be better off without elevating the supernatural.

"I think it's a waste of time and energy. The urban areas are not really caught up in these supernatural issues," says social commentator Thomas Deve.

"Claims of witchcraft need to be investigated instead of putting down every disorder in society that is taking in our society to witchcraft or modern magic," he adds.

The church in Zimbabwe has always believed that witchcraft exists, but it has been careful to establish the source of such supernatural powers.

"As Christians we've got to recognise that supernatural forces are good if they originate from God - now witchcraft is one of the things that originates from the Satanic world," says Reverend Roy Musasiwa who runs a theological college in the capital, Harare.

The Witchcraft Suppression Act was used fairly frequently, but prosecuting someone under the new legislation may prove difficult.

The new Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act will demand proof that a person has supernatural powers and that they are using them to harm others.

"It's not going to be easy task," says Custom Kachambwa, a judge with years of experience in the legal field.

He says witnesses will often be traditional healers, who could be accused of practising harmful magic in the future.

But whatever the problems, the repealing of the witchcraft laws is another sign that Zimbabwe's government is continuing to move away from Western values and placing more emphasis on the country's own traditions.