Beira, Mozambique being a favourite holiday destination for white Rhodesians. One reminder of this is the Grande Hotel, built by the Portuguese, near the shore of the Indian Ocean. By 1970, the city of Beira had 113,770 inhabitants. After independence from Portugal in 1975, many white ethnic Portuguese left the city. Mozambique was ravaged by a civil war from 1977 to 1992, opposing Marxist FRELIMO, which controlled the government, to the rebels of RENAMO, descending to near total chaos in a couple of years. The famine, disease and poverty-stricken country collapsed. In Beira, the famous Grande Hotel was occupied by around 1,000
History of the Jews in Mozambique History of the Jews in Mozambique The history of the Jews in Mozambique, until 1975, was closely connected with the history of Judaism through the former Portuguese empire, particularly those elements of it operating on the coastlines of the Indian Ocean. By the time the first Portuguese ships entered this ocean in the late 15th century, Jewish merchants and persons connected with sea work had lived on, and next to, this ocean for many centuries. As a European presence deepened by the late 19th century in the Portuguese East African colonial capital then called "Lourenço Marques", a cluster of Jews