Gombin was occupied by the German army on September 7, 1939. On arrival, the Germans subjected the Jews to a regime of forced labor and a few weeks later they burned the town's wooden synagogue and Beit Hamidrash. At the beginning of 1940 the Gombin Jews were evicted from their homes and concentrated in a ghetto. In the following months, about 200 Jews were deported to labor camps in Konin, Eindziov, and Hohenzaltz, many of them eventually ending up in Auschwitz. In the Spring of 1942 the Germans liquidated the Gombin ghetto, dispatching the more than 2,000 remaining Jews to the extermination camp at Chelmno. Only 212 of the Jews who were in Gombin at the time of the German invasion survived the Holocaust.

The Konin Regional Museum, which is now in charge of the exhibit and the compounds of the Chelmno extermination camp, facilitates the installation of memorials to those who wish to perpetuate and honor the memory of the Holocaust victims from their shtetls. Landsmen and descendants have erected monuments and plaques for Jewish communities from many other towns of the region, but nothing has been done to erect a physical token of remembrance for the Gombin Jews who were murdered at Chelmno.

In August 1997, in fulfillment of the organization's mandate, the directors of the Gombin Society approved a project to dedicate a memorial to the Gombiner Holocaust victims. In October 1997, Gombin Society director Leon Zamosc negotiated the details of the project with Lucja Pawlicka-Nowak, director of the Konin Regional Museum, and Jan Rassumowski, the artist recommended by the museum.

In August 1999, a group of nearly 50 Gombiner descendants and members of the Gombin Society Board of Directors returned to Gombin to hold an official rededication ceremony. The ceremony was also attended Gombin and regional officials.

The text of the plaques on the monument bear the following inscription in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and English:

Gombin In Eternal Memory

In this place of horror
The valley of the shadow of death, Chelmno
in the Spring of 1942
Over 2,000 Jews from Gombin
men and women, young and old
were gassed and burned
by the German Nazis

If only my head was filled with water
and my eyes were a fountain of tears
Then I would weep by day and night
Over the destruction of the flower of my people
(Jeremiah 8:23)

We are still here
We shall never forget

Survivors and descendants of Gombin
from all over the world