Dikran Hilo

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My name is Jacques Hilo. My father Dikran was born in 1913 in Mardin, Western Armenia, today’s southeast Turkey. He was the third son, and fourth child, of Abdul Ahhad Hilo and his wife Jamileh. Their large, well-furnished residence was shared with Abdul Ahhad’s three brothers and their families.

Abdul Ahhad was a religious man whose name translates to “The Servant of Sunday.” Having refused to deny Christ, he and his three brothers were taken in the night, chained together, and marched off to slaughter. The scrape of their shackles along the cobblestone road would haunt his widow for the rest of her life.

Jamileh, her three sisters-in-law, and their children—19 persons in all—were driven from their family home. Before they were forced into the death march, Jamileh left her two-year-old Dikran hidden away in the care of her sister Majida, who was married to a Christian Assyrian man.

With her sons Joseph and George at her side, Jamileh carried her baby girl for nearly 40 days through the Syrian desert. Witnessing rape and other violent abuses by the Turkish guards, Jamileh smeared herself with feces to keep the men at a distance. 

The family found refuge in Aleppo, Syria, where, three years later, little Dikran was reunited with them. The repayment of a debt owed to Abdul Ahhad and his brothers was enough to support the Hilo family for five years. Once the debt was paid in full, they could no longer afford to care for their children; Dikran would spend much of his youth in a Catholic orphanage. 

Dikran joined the French Army in the 1938, was married in 1939 to Angel Mardini in Aleppo, had three children, Jacques, Abdul Ahhad, and Victor, moved to the United States in 1989, and passed away in 2000.