Copyright protection of the 20th century cultural heritage

Author has analysed chosen national and international acts and came to conclusion that no definition specifying places of memory as objects of legal protection had yet been adopted in these regulations. However this in no way means that places of memory remain completely outside legal area, although they are covered by the legal system of heritage protection merely within the framework of general definition of heritage. In particular, to be qualified as monuments these places have to meet standard criteria of “historical value or significance”. Only under some legal systems such general provisions are supplemented by special laws that define legal protection of these places either by specifying their type or by indicating specific objects.
As an example of the first approach English Law can be given, where battlefields are subject to listing in the special Historic England’s Register of Historic Battlefields. The latter solution has been applied, for example, in Germany and Poland. In German law, one can refer to, eg., law of the land of Saxony, which designates as protected objects the synagogues in Dresden and Gorlitz, the sites of the old synagogues in Chemnitz and Leipzig, and former concentration camps. The Polish Act on the Protection of the Former Nazi Extermination Camps expressly mentions eight such camps.
In the conclusion author sees the need of elaboration of legal definition of places of memory which could be based on the existing doctrine indicating that such places are peculiar combinations of tangible and intangible elements that together are important not only for specific communities but often have much broader significance and concern for all humanity, and therefore are part of the world’s cultural heritage. Such definition could be incorporated to the 1972 UNESCO Convention or at earlier stage to the Operational Guidelines connected with this act.