Can you "commemorate" something bad?

Solution 1:

Does an event to be remembered get any worse than this? Go here.

The main commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will be held in front of the Death Gate of KL Auschwitz II–Birkenau. On this day – which, for ten years now has been commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day – various anniversary events will be held in many countries: conferences, exhibitions, ceremonies, meetings…

Solution 2:

Sure, but offering up a remembrance might be more fitting:

re·mem·brance
rəˈmembrəns
(noun)

    the action of remembering the dead, especially in a ceremony

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
• http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/05/04/holocaust-remembrance-day-israels-needy-survivors-still-suffer/83913468/

Solution 3:

Commemorate is the best available term. Note the prefix Co-, this makes it a group memorial. As in: our group must never forget this extraordinary thing, terrible, or marvelous, as it was.

Group Memory (or commemoration) precedes factions, and factions precede neutrality, (preceding the need for it). Just as a single comma is not a sonnet, nor good or bad.

Solution 4:

Commemorate is the best term to use.

Bear in mind you commemorate the past event - not the anniversary.

So you would commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, which happened 70 years ago.

However, you would not commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.