By Ron Kampeas/(JTA) — An exhibit over 20 years old against an iPhone: Docents at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are increasingly noting the battle with hand-held devices to keep the interest of young people. Now a $20 million gift to help revitalize the Washington, D.C., museum will aim to assist the docents while focusing on the challenges posed to democracies by rapid changes in technology. Allan and Shelley Holt announced their grant — one of the largest in the museum’s history — in honor of Allan Holt’s parents, who are Holocaust survivors. Holt’s father is 96 and his mother is 93.

The gift will go toward a $540 million campaign aimed at revitalizing the museum, the museum said in a release. The money will help realign the museum’s educational mission with the 21st century through a physical refurbishing and programmatic changes. One emphasis is on new technologies and how they can be exploited for propaganda in an age when political messages spread rapidly through social media and other means. The changes and refurbishing, which will take place over five to seven years, also will address how audiences have been shaped by technology. Docents, among them Holocaust survivors, have reported in recent years that they have to compete with multiple distractions, including the hand-held devices. The museum may open avenues to interact with the exhibit through the devices now preoccupying the young visitors. Another “nuts and bolts” change,” Ogilvie said, would be to the “Tower of Faces,” a central structure featuring photographs of victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Some of them have faded, and the museum plans to return to the original negatives and digitize them. Updates also would incorporate information made available since the museum’s opening. Access to Russian archives post-Soviet collapse has revealed much more about the “Holocaust by bullets,” the mass murders carried out by the Nazis in Soviet areas.