Jakov Bienenfeld

Jakov Bienenfeld (28 July 1948 – 8 February 2016) was a Croatian entrepreneur and developer.

Life and career Bienenfeld was born in Zagreb on 28 July 1948 to a Jewish family. Most of his family perished during the Holocaust.

His father, Zlatko Bienenfeld, was Major general of the Croatian Army and personal adviser to late Croatian defence minister Gojko Šušak.

He was a prominent entrepreneur who owned several successful businesses, including a travel agency and a developing company. In the 1990s Bienenfeld brought an exclusive German fashion brand Escada to Croatia.

Bienenfeld was an acquaintance of Ante Gotovina and has publicly supported him, stating that Gotovina is not guilty of the crimes he had been sentenced for. He resented former President of Croatia Stjepan Mesić's interference in the split of the Zagreb Jewish Community, when Mesić supported Ivo Goldstein, Slavko Goldstein and rabbi Kotel Da-Don in establishing the new Jewish community, Bet Israel. Bienenfeld stated that Mesić accused him of behaving like a Nazi, although Bienenfeld is a Jew whose many family members have been killed during the Holocaust.

In 2013, during an interview for Jutarnji list, Bienenfeld said that he is against the reconstruction of the Zagreb Synagogue, primarily because of the future maintenance costs which Zagreb's Jewish community could not finance. In the interview he also noted that in 1994, when the first President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman told him that they should build the new synagogue which would be funded by the state government, Bienenfeld declined the offer, believing it to be inappropriate when 1800 Catholic churches were left destroyed at the time, during the Croatian War of Independence.