The painter and graphic artist Richard Ziegler had worked on illustrations for the Bible before his exile. He continued these studies in emigration. He commented on daily political events in portraits and caricatures of personalities as a press illustrator, whereas his unpublished sequence of graphic art entitled Täter/Opfer included personal experiences and references to ancient myths.

Ziegler designed combinations of text and images. Here, he used the text of the creation story (Book of Genesis, verse 19) from the 1912 version of Martin Luther's Bible translation. In the story of Lot and his family, he focused on the scene in which Lot flees from Sodom to Zoar. He thus combined the story of the Old Testament with the recent experiences of Jewish refugees from Germany. Like Lot, they were denounced as foreigners before being expelled, and now British Second World War bombs were being dropped on the towns from which they had fled.  

A fresco in the Vatican, created by the Italian painter Raphael, in c. 1517 served as the inspiration for the picture. Ziegler based the gestures of the fleeing people on those of the painting, however he merely suggested the girls clothes, in keeping with his own style.