In 1951 Furcolo was appointed to a special committee established to investigate reports of mass killings of Polish military officers and intelligentsia by the Soviets during World War II in the Katyn Forest. Furcolo's appointment to this committee (which was otherwise dominated by Polish-Americans) was also the work of McCormack, likely because of the large Polish-American population in Furcolo's district. The committee concluded that the killings had been perpetrated by the Soviet secret service (NKVD), and sought to bring a case before the International Court of Justice. Furcolo used what he learned from the committee's investigations to write a novel, "Rendezvous at Katyn", which is set amid those events.