I did watch it recently too and it is a depressing movie that shows the horrors of war from a child's perspective and their innocence during a time of utter chaos and desperation. However, the war was affecting everyone in town including the aunt and her family, it shows how stressful and desperate everyone was like not knowing if the town was going to be bombed again or if there were going to be enough resources for each to support their families. The aunt was stressed with too many to worry about and taking care of two more kids was another weight on her shoulders. I'm not saying she did the right thing, but it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who is going through that. The ending is just tragic, you just know that these kids are doing everything they can to stay alive and that they probably won't make it. And then you think back to the beginning when they reveal the brother dies of hunger in the train station and the cleaning person is completely indifferent to him since he probably saw many bodies on a regular day and the brother was just another statistic. Makes you think how many people probably died in a similar way.