The paper is a summary of speeches delivered during the debate held on the Faculty of Humanities at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń on 14th November 2019. The discussion was anchored in panelists’ recent texts concerning state of art in Polish oral history and its significance in contemporary history academic research. The key problem discussed was ability of oral history to create innovative, fresh images of the past – especially in the field of professional, academic historiography.