Karapetê Haço was born in the village of Bileyder (now called Binatlı, Batman, in Batman province, Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire to an Armenian family in 1900. In 1915, he witnessed the annihilation of his village during the Armenian Genocide. Xaço, his brother Abraham, and sisters Manuşak and Xezal survived the massacre because a soldier said Let's free them and allow them to go as he had lost his parents.