The first Australian to write to Otto Frank was Anne Finlayson.

Otto called her “the other Anne”.

After a tireless effort, the Sydney Jewish Museum tracked her down, known now by her married name, Anne Skurray.

“I was astounded,” she told 7.30.

“Good heavens, someone’s suddenly looking for me.”

© ABC News The ‘other Anne’ photographed in 1953.Tracking down the ‘other Anne’

Anne Finlayson, as she was known then, was 19 years old when she wrote her first letter to Otto Frank in 1956.

“To my amazement and gratification, he wrote back to me,” she said.

“And from then on we just formed a friendship — we built up an empathy, you might say.”

Ms Finlayson and Mr Frank exchanged letters from 1956 until 1980.

“We [Otto’s daughter and I] were both called Anne and it just gave him a feeling of comfort,” she said.

“He said to me: ‘Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve just met someone but you’ve known them all your life and you could just say anything to them and know that they understand? That’s the feeling I have about you.'”

Ms Finlayson said that she felt Mr Frank still needed to be a father, after his two daughters died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“He wanted to have a feeling that he was connected to somebody,” she said.

“I’d like to think I may have given him a little bit of comfort after the loss of his whole family.”

Mr Frank went so far as to confide in Ms Finlayson that he blamed himself for the fate of his late wife and daughters and felt that he should have done more to protect them.

Ms Finlayson became extremely close to Mr Frank’s second wife, Fritzi Frank, who was also a survivor of Auschwitz.

© ABC News Anne Finlayson and Fritzi Frank became very close in the 1980s following Otto Frank’s death.In 1976 she visited the Franks in Basel, Switzerland and returned many times.

She last saw Otto in 1979 before he died in 1980.

The letters are on public display in a world-first exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Ms Finlayson said she felt her letters were now in good hands.

“It’s a relief they’re not going to be thrown in the dustbin by someone who doesn’t know what they are,” she said.

“The whole story is being relived and to me it’s very, very moving because its continued to be in my life for all these years.”

The exhibition will run until September 30, 2016 at the Sydney Jewish Museum.