The Holocaust happened in Dr Deslee Campbell's lifetime and she grew up in the shadow of the World War II when family members saw active service. Even in far away rural Australia, her childhood nightmares were about defeating Nazi soldiers. Being a budding historian from an early age, in the 1950s Deslee Campbell scoured libraries for books about the Holocaust when the genre was still in its infancy. Since those early days, more children's diaries have been discovered. Her first book on the subject, Voices From the Silence, was written in 1994 and republished in 2024.