Josef Herman left Poland in 1938, at the age of 27. He hoped to escape discrimination, and after two years arrived in Britain. In 1943 he painted Where to Now?, which resides at The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art. A mother and child together. Is it a final moment? I think of my mother, separated from hers at a train station in Vienna in the summer of 1939. It could be Idlib or Cox's Bazaar in our times. The image, and the emotions evoked, are universal.

Three years after Herman completed his work, Laura Knight travelled to Germany, to attend hearings in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice. This was a moment of creation, the application of new ideas for international justice. It encompassed the crime of 'genocide', for the protection of groups, and 'crimes against humanity', for the rights of individuals. The legal terms were created by Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, migrants who hoped that international rules might offer protections against atrocity, a story I describe in my book East West Street. In Courtroom 600 they prosecuted Hans Frank, without knowing he was responsible for the murders of their own families.

Frank Bowling was born in Guyana in 1934, a child of British colonialism. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 heralded a process known as 'decolonisation'. Five years later Bowling arrived in Britain where, in 1968, he painted Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman, now at the Tate. Guyana had recently gained its independence, and the work depicts the newly independent country's flag.

In 1939, Frank Auerbach travelled from Germany to Britain on the Kindertranport. He was seven years old. Many of his works are painted around Camden, in London, where he lives. This reminds me of the importance in our daily lives of local places, and emphasises the consequence of rupture. There were many paintings I might have chosen, but I have settled on 'St Pancras Steps, Station', painted in 1978, now at Touchstones Rochdale.

I happen to live in Camden, in a house bought many years ago from the family of Milein Cosman. She was born in Germany, and arrived in Britain in 1939, aged eighteen, where she enrolled in the Slade School of Art. She became well known through her drawings of musicians and composers, many of which can be seen in the basement restaurant of the Wigmore Hall. She was married to Hans Keller, the musicologist, who came from Austria after being tortured by the Gestapo. The room he worked in at home is the one I now occupy.

In writing the book about Lauterpacht and 'crimes against humanity', I was assisted by his son Eli, who taught me international law. On one occasion, in his office at home, he showed me a portrait of his wife, commissioned from Maggi Hambling. Several years later, Stephen Fry interviewed me about the book, at the Hay Festival. In the course of the conversation, I learned, unexpectedly, about his central European and migratory ancestors. It was an immensely moving moment. Recently, he has made the audio version of my new book, The Ratline.