The name of the locality is first mentioned (as Crase) in a 1257 document of King Mindaugas, by which a part of Samogitia was assigned to the Teutonic Order.

Vytautas the Great during his first years of rule ceded Samogitia to the Order; the regent he appointed lived in Kražiai.

The English Protestant, Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband Richard Bertie, exiled during the reign of the staunchly Catholic Queen Mary I of England, resided for some years in Kražiai as administrators on behalf of King Sigismund II Augustus.

As part of its Russification campaign, the Russian government decided to tear down the local Catholic monastery church.

This alarmed Kaunas Governor Nikolai Klingenberg, who led a force of police and Don Cossacks that invaded the church and brutally drove out the people.

Besides the usual charitable institutions, Krozh had two synagogues, two prayer-houses, and about ten different circles for the study of the Bible and the Talmud.