“Die Slocum brennt!” (“THE SLOCUM IS ON FIRE!”) is a documentary for television about the terrible, yet largely forgotten, fire desaster of the Steamboat “General Slocum” in which nearly 1100 people died within sight of New York City in 1904. The victims were mainly German immigrants celebrating their annual Sunday School outing. I found it very moving to explore into the biographies of these people who had come to America with great hopes and had begun to establish themselves as grocers, workmen, maids, tailors, mechanics etc. and had carved a little slice of the Big American Dream for themselves when disaster struck out of the blue.