An official says a couple who destroyed a World War II Jewish hideout that was located in an apartment they were renting from the city of Warsaw have pleaded guilty to ruining a historic site.

The couple, identified as Dariusz P. and Elzbieta P, were indicted after city authorities discovered in 2012 that they had removed the wardrobe to create a kitchen in the small apartment.

During the Second World War, Warsaw ghetto inmate Leon Jolson made the hideout behind a giant wardrobe in the apartment, and he and his family hid there from 1942 until September 1944. He and his wife survived the Holocaust.

In 1999, the hideout was listed as a historic monument.

On Tuesday, Dariusz Slepokura, a spokesman for Warsaw prosecutors, said the couple pleaded guilty.

(AP)