When my brother graduated from Columbia, I think it was 1966, he secured an apartment for us close to the university.  It was particularly slummy, with a police lock on the door and a peculiar smell.  My mother delighted in calling it “Hotel La Vance,” since vance are bedbugs or lice. 

This is not an unknown fact.  Here it is on “M.A.S.H.

  She used to tell about how the German soldiers (WWI) would laugh at the Jews scratching themselves all over – until they too started scratching.  Lice, we thought, was a thing of the past.

p.s. i got the link from the Forwards